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Poetry

• And it was Beautiful

• Inside
• Brittany
• Dead
• Babylon
• Ghost Town
• All I Need
• Ana
• Mirror
• Untitled
• Daddy
• imperfect
• Catharsis of the Soul
• Untitled 2
• Little Puppet
• Mid-October
• The Ant In the Middle of the Line
• A Place of My Own
• Hatred
• The Waitress
• Reflection
• Eden
• Captain Kid
• Untitled 3

Essay/Prose

•  Thoughts of Creation

Short Story

• War
• Earthquakes
• Rat Boy
• Last-Minute Letter
• Harvey's Cat
• Point of No Return
• It's My Life
• The Watcher Book Review

There was a beautiful creature that walked into my room one day
And said It would stay with me forever
There was a beautiful creature that walked into my room one day
And said It’s name was Love

And Its hair was made of words of silk
And Its eyes were made of blue compassion
And Its skin was made of sweet caresses
And Its lips were made of gentle kisses
And Its mouth spoke of love and wisdom
And Its arms were made of a delicate embrace
And Its hands were made of tender cuddles
And Its feet were clean and smooth
They weren’t callused or scarred like mine
And It was dressed with the colors of affection and passion
And It smelled pleasantly pure

And there was another creature that walked amongst others in my garden
There was another creature that never trusted Love
And It was a hideous creature that walked amongst others in my garden
And It said Its name was Jealousy

And Its hair was made of words of tough leather
And Its eyes were made of dark distrust
And Its skin was made of bruises and open wounds
And Its lips were made of deceitful intrigue
And Its mouth spoke words of ignorance and deception
And Its arms were made of a false hug 
And Its hands were made of violent thrusts
And Its feet were callused and scarred
Just like mine
And It was dressed in the colors of loathe and hate
And It reeked with the fumes of vague impurity
And Love stayed with me in my room
And kept me company, everywhere I went
And Jealousy walked amongst others in my garden
And followed us, everywhere we went

And Love was with me
Every time I lay with you in bed
And Love sang softly in my ear
Every time I looked into your eyes
And Love was with me
Every time you kissed me
And Love caressed my skin so softly
Every time I fell in love with you

But Jealousy still walked amongst others in my garden
They were hideous creatures whose names it hurts to think of
They were the sons of Hate
And they were the brothers of Deceit

But Love still whispered in my ear
Even after every time you hurt me
Love still wrapped around me
Even if my eyes were full of tears
Love still hugged me tightly
Even when you were with someone else
Love still kissed my aching lips
Even while you were gone

One day after noticing that Jealousy couldn’t hurt Love
Hate sent another son to try and hurt us
It was Anger
And it stormed into my room as it always had

Anger took Love by the hair; the hair made of words of silk
And it sprayed those words with the stench of fury
Anger blinded those eyes of blue compassion
Anger whipped the skin of sweet caresses with the whip of rage
Anger violently struck the lips of gentle kisses
Anger made Love’s mouth scream out in words of torture and pain
Anger tied Love’s arms of delicate embrace with the ropes of insufferable agony
Anger cut Love’s hands of tender cuddles, and made them bleed the blood of anguish
Anger walked Love through hindered roads of thorns, and made Its feet rough and callused
Anger stained the clothes of passion and affection, with loathe and hate
Anger made Love reek the fumes of vague impurity
And Love returned into my room
Battered and bruised
Blinded and scarred
But Love was still beautiful

Every night Love cried
Even when I tried to remind It of all those beautiful moments
Every night Love cried
Even when I started telling It about our first time
Every night Love cried
It cried even more when I reminded it about my lover
Every night Love cried
And there was nothing that could comfort it

It took several months, before time could heal the wounds
And before the smooth hands of the clock could cure the pain
It took several months, before time could heal the wounds
But it did

And Hate looked from the garden, into my window
And saw that Love had survived
And Hate was furious as It saw Love’s recovery
And It had a meeting with his sons
Hate promised to recompense the one that would kill Love
But Jealousy volunteered again
Hate outburst in anger
You, Jealousy, have disappointed me
Anger has done a better job than you, and still, it’s not enough
Jealousy begged and pleaded for one more chance
And Hate granted it, one more chance

As I walked through my garden
I saw my lover in the arms of another
I saw my lover kiss another
And what my eyes saw, ripped my heart open

Love whispered in my ear Its words of wisdom and compassion
While Jealousy yelled at me to do something
Love embraced me slightly, with its arms that reminded me of my lover
While Jealousy shoved me viciously, with its powerful arms of distrust
Love sang to me, the melodious sounds of beautiful memories
While Jealousy resonated all the stale memories, that hurt my ears
Love dried my tears
While Jealousy made me cry even more
Love kissed my cheeks
While Jealousy slapped cynicism into me
Love had almost won

But Jealousy took the dagger of fury and grief
And stabbed Love with it
Love lay there on the ground
Yelling as the threshold of pain consumed Its heart
Love’s wound bled in a tremendous hemorrhage
And Its wound lay open as I attempted to treat it
The yelling continued as I tried to mend the wound
But I needed help

But my lover never noticed
The wounds that our Love had borne  
But my lover never noticed
And my lover never tried to rescue It

Love lay sick in bed
As all the others in the garden had a sensational celebration
Love lay sick in bed
As all the others delighted in its failure

Hate invited all his sons and daughters
And his nephews and uncles
And all his closest relatives to join in the glorious feast
To celebrate the proximate death of Love
Melancholy, Anguish, and Pain; Depression, Grief, and Sorrow
Fury, Rage, and Vehemence;  Agony, Torture, and Distress
All gathered in the house of Hate and had a celebration
And they laughed and cheered

They danced through my garden
And made their way into my room
They danced around my bed
And they laughed as Love lay sick in bed

Love shed tears of blood
As It developed hemophilia
Love shed tears of blood
As the wounds lay open

Love stained my bed with blood
And then my lover walked into my room
Love lay there
Looking at my lover
And my lover walked over to my bed
And looked at Love in the eye
And said I have found another
My lover stabbed Love one last time, with the blade of truth
And Love cried one last time
And Love bled one last time
And Love then died

My lover left
As all the sons of Hate packed their bags and made their way into my room
My lover left
As Love took Its last breath

And today I still live with Melancholy, Anguish, and Pain
Depression looks me in the eye
Grief and Sorrow wrap around me
Agony whispers in my ear
Torture and Distress stain my walls
And Fury, Rage, and Vehemence all sleep in my bed
And the absence of Love has scarred my heart
And the absence of Love has possessed my mind and filled it with pain
And the absence of Love tortures me everyday
And the absence of Love chains me to the past
And the absence of Love tucks me into bed

And I don’t think I remember who the murderer was
Whether it was my lover
Or whether it was Jealousy
Or both
And I don’t think it matters
Because there is now something that keeps me alive in all this turmoil
Because today another beautiful creature walked into my room
It’s name is Memory, and Its immortal

The girl huddled together with her mother. They wore only rags and the wind bit painfully into her fingers and nose, hunger gnawed at her stomach.
The girl glanced up. She saw her father trudging dejectedly toward them, his shoulders hunched against the bitter cold. The girl could see he had not found food. They would not eat today, just like yesterday and the day before that.
The girl heard the gut-wrenching sound they had all come to loathe and dread over the past months. Her father fell in a crumpled heap to the ground. She knelt beside the motionless body that had once held her father. Blood oozed from the single bullet wound in his chest. The expression on the enemy soldiers face showed brief horror before returning to cool indifference.
 The girl cradled the lifeless form to herself and awaited the sharp sting of death to extinguish the hopeless agony of war. She willed it, but it did not come. She supposed that a little girl wasn't enough of a threat to bother with. This was the biggest mistake the soldier had ever made and one he would not make again. The girl untangled the gun from her dead father. She took aim at the back of the retreating soldier. His body fell to the ground with a thud.
That was the way it had to be, a life for a life. All's fair in love and war.

Come with me to Babylon
and speak a thousand tongues
Dance with me upon the sands
to songs the ancients sung
None will mark our passage
in the secret of the night
Dawn will greet the border guards
when we are out of sight
Gardens grace the city walls
and fragrance fills the sky
Nectar of forbidden fruits
await my love and I
Deep inside the temple
of some foreign, angry god
Perceptions of reality
are primitive and flawed.

Harvey didn't sleep. A man of thirty-nine, medium build, thinning brown hair, and a penchant for brown polyester, he had come home every night to maddening insomnia for nearly eight years. He had tried sleeping pills, aromatherapy, a psychiatrist, a sleep specialist, acupuncture, feng shui, seratonin, prostitutes, and illegal drugs. He just didn't sleep.
He had worked in the engineering department of a major corporation for a little over eight years, though why he did was a mystery to everybody, including himself. After twenty suicidal years of accounting and insurance sales, he had decided to go to engineering school; and although he couldn't remember actually having learned anything about engineering, the Karma gods seemed to be repaying him for a lifetime of drudgery and at least enough will power to return to school. This was the only reason he could figure for why he continued to get paid. He was unaware of any kind of technical knowledge or engineering ability that he might have, or be getting paid for. His job consisted of making copies, paper airplanes, bad jokes, and passes at female co-workers, as well as an overall contribution to the CO2 level of the workplace.
He came home every evening with a feeling that he'd lost the entire day and hadn't gotten anything out of it. He would feed his pet hamster, Larry, and then would sit down with a newspaper. He didn't care much about the world or the country, and most of the news didn't interest him, nor did he ever absorb any of it, but he still read the paper devotedly. Every night he would take out his pencil and spend hours drawing all over the paper: graceful, nude figures, still lives, houses: doodles. The pages were covered with them by the time he discarded the paper. This was the only part of the day that he enjoyed.
Insomnia gives the diseased a unique experience. Perhaps the most unpleasant kind of unhappiness possible without pain; a unique mixture of frustration, sheer anger, hatred for oneself, boredom, and confusion, and all to be suffered alone, amongst the sleeping corpses of a world of enemies, mocking in their very peacefulness, in their ability to achieve what the insomniac cannot. It is as though the body rebels against its own needs and desires. All of these things had run through Harvey's mind as he lay awake in the early morning hours, salvaging his evening newspaper and finishing the sketches. He spent most of his evening on them, revisited them all night long, and deposited them in the trash when the sun came up. It did not occur to him that his wasn't much of a life.

Harvey came home one Tuesday, a Tuesday that started out like any other Tuesday, spent the entire day being like any other Tuesday, and looked as though it was going to end up like any other Tuesday, to find a subtle difference. A small, gray cat, little more than a kitten, was crouched on his doorstep, as though waiting. It didn't make a sound when he approached it, and didn't have any idea that it was blocking the door, nor any intention of moving.
"Whatcha doing here, little guy?" Harvey stooped down, and couldn't resist petting it a little. It was terribly skinny; he could feel its ribs through its drooping fur, and it seemed to be shivering in the winter air. At first, it didn't seem to respond to his caresses, but after a while, it looked up at him with wide, green eyes, and started to purr. "Alright, I'll give you some scraps, or something. But get out of my door." He picked it up with more difficulty than he expected. It mewed in dismay as he placed it beside the door, which he proceeded to unlock, open, and close behind him.
The first thing he saw upon entering was the cat. It was curled up on top of a stack of papers on his easy chair, and seemed to be sleeping already. Harvey looked at the key and then the door with a little surprise, to find the door half-open, and he realized that he must not have shut it properly. He did so, and then walked over to the animal, intending to remove it from his house, but as he looked at it closely, his heart softened a little. The cat was too skinny and cold for him to refuse it succor for a few short hours. He didn't realize it, but he enjoyed the prospect of company. "I'll just fix you some scraps," he said to the cat, who did not respond.
He returned from the kitchen with some bacon and the skeleton of a chicken wing to find the scrawny thing with its paw halfway into Larry's cage. Larry was crouched in the corner, convulsing with fear. Harvey dropped the scraps, and ran shouting to chase the thing off. The cat jumped down nonchalantly, groomed itself a little, and wandered over to the scraps. It took the time out to shoot a face of disgust at Harvey, who glared right back, before it dove into the bacon.
After eating, the cat made itself comfortable on the easy chair, and Harvey sat down to his evening newspaper. The cat was silent, curled up in a pleasantly compact little package, and completely immobile. Harvey, entertaining a strange feeling of mutual contentment between himself and the animal, took up his pencil and began to draw.
The cat sat up almost immediately, and let out a long, soft mew. Harvey turned around to see what might be troubling it, to find himself staring right into its lean face. Its eyes seemed to glow; looking into them gave Harvey an odd feeling, as though he was looking into his own heart. He shuddered and turned back to his drawings. The cat jumped off of the chair and over to Harvey. It rubbed up against his legs, jumped onto the desktop to bump heads with him, and then settled in his lap. Harvey petted it absently, noting how soft its fur was despite its manginess. Whenever he picked up the pencil the thing seemed to purr; noting its appreciation for his drawing, Harvey named it Art.
With a few sad looks and some rather painful mewling, the thing convinced Harvey not to put it out for the night. "Alright," he told it. "You can stay here for the night, but tomorrow you'll either leave or I'll take you to a shelter." Art looked at him pitifully. "And if you don't behave, you're going out tonight." The cat seemed to understand this; it lowered its head and curled up in the chair.
Something curious happened that night. Harvey fell sound asleep as soon as he hit the pillow, and slept solidly for ten-and-a-half hours. He was late to work because of it.
When he stepped out of his room at eight in the morning, he found Art curled peacefully in front of his door, purring softly. He quietly fixed it some scraps, and, noticing evidence that the cat had been trying to get into Larry's cage again, put several heavy books on top of it. Feeling heady from such a full night's sleep, he decided to let the cat stay until he came back after work.
Insomnia's effects on the diseased during the day are in fact more profound than those suffered at night. Everything seems to move too quickly; the insomniac finds himself moving and thinking at a much slower pace than the rest of the world. Having a tendency to hallucinate slightly, and as everything seems much more dreamlike in general to the perpetually tired, the diseased attaches less importance to regular occurrences; he doesn't take anything seriously, and it does not occur to him that he should.
Even more profound than this, however, is the shock to the diseased of a day taken on a good night's sleep after year upon year of hopeless insomnia. All of the boredom and listlessness which had characterized Harvey's work persona for as long as anyone could remember fell away, and were replaced by something new: nerve-wrenching fear. The world had sped up, and he was not prepared to cope with it. He suddenly became aware of all of the things that he was supposed to be doing, and was in fact being paid for; he noticed the annoyance, arrogance and actual hatred projected by his coworkers, which he had never noticed previously. They were almost tangible to him. Even the loud noises of the copy machine and the hum of his computer were enough to startle him.
Harvey came home to find that the cat had eaten Larry, and was staring greedily at the birds outside. When he stepped through the door, it came up to him immediately and rubbed up against his hand. He felt too startled to be angry at it, and merely sat down to his newspaper.
The words, which he usually skimmed right over without absorbing, suddenly jumped off the page at him, clear and understandable and impossible to ignore. He sat back, surprised at what he had been missing. He felt as though he had entered a new world, a world where everything was relevant; a new place where words and events and time really meant something.
He shook his head and tossed the paper aside, suddenly unsure of what to spend the next several hours doing. He looked at the cat and, having completely forgotten his previous conviction to remove it from his home, scooped it up in one arm and took it out the door with him, leaving behind his coat and hat.
Harvey took Art to a spot he knew from his childhood. It was a small park in the middle of the city, with a pond that froze and ducks that walked on the ice, begging for scraps. Most of the important events of his early life had been reviewed by him right there, looking at the ducks. Their absurd grace and pleasing shape gave him pause, helped him think.
Now he felt a need to come back here again; his head was so full he could hardly bear it, and he felt he had a perspective that he hadn't had for as long as he could remember. It struck him as odd that the one day when he felt the best he had in nearly eight years had been so dominated by a startling realization that his work (and by extension, his life) made him feel awful.
His taking the job had been a direct result of some of the things his father had told him as a young man. He had never been disillusioned by dreams of art, music, athletics, or science. His father had told him straight that all that mattered was money, that he would learn a trade-and, quite honestly, Harvey had never had much of an opinion on the matter. His interests had always been in avoiding responsibility, and they remained so when his father sent him to college, got him a job in this business, and then that; up until his current job, which he had gotten simply because he couldn't think of anything better to do. His return to school had been an attempt to stray from this path of least resistance-but ultimately he had decided that he was nothing more or less than supremely mediocre, and had applied for a job that reflected that fact.
He stayed at the park for most of the evening, thinking about his life-his job, his father, his house, and his wife, who did not stick in his mind as much as he had thought she would-until the sun went down over the willow trees, and his mind was silenced, struck by the beauty. He watched the last rays brush across the clouds like watercolor strokes; he had never realized before how the very last light washed upwards like a crashing wave before retreating into the softly darkening twilight hues. Harvey smiled, picked up Art, went home, and slept for eighteen hours.
When he woke up the next day, late again, he couldn't bear the idea of going to work. His mind was consumed with the thought of the sunset. The blazing colors burned streaks across his memory, vivid in his mind whenever he closed his eyes, as though taunting him, daring him to capture them with his own hand. Harvey skipped work and went shopping for art supplies.
When he finished the skyscape in watercolor and acrylic paint, he moved on to another of the fiery images stamped in his psyche, and after that, another. Canvas after canvas flew from his hands, filling up his apartment; whether they were good art was beyond him, and his judgment was not concerned with it. He felt obsessed with making them, with the ability and opportunity to fill canvases with sheer color.
He remembered people who had been important to him and their faces flashed though his balding head.  Crying at their inexpressible beauty, he captured their memories in vivid colors, throwing paint at the canvases like bullets at enemies, until the emotive motion exhausted him and he slept a dreamless reverie atop a pile of drying canvases. He awoke with a vision of the most profound portrait ever, to find the cat curled in a small ball in his line of sight. In a flash of inspiration and sheer creative desire, he knew he had to have the animal captured. He wanted to steal its very essence and plaster it against a canvas. Right then and there, covered in paints which matted his hair and stained his clothing, Harvey stood up and began the portrait.
He began the outline in pencil, but somehow found it lacking in expression, and began using a medley of colored pencils and pastels. He stood back and looked at his work, scowled, and threw it away. He needed more.
He started out this time with a basic outline: an oval. He put in the tail and the ears, the only parts that felt important to him just yet: the expressive parts. Colors flew as he attacked the canvas with paints, watercolors, pencils, pastels, food coloring; anything he could use.
After some time, he felt dissatisfied. He stopped for a minute and looked at the thing, the source of so much confusion and inspiration. The cat had been wandering around him for hours, staring at his work, as though with silent encouragement. He decided that a subject which held such a huge image in his mind deserved a proportionally large space for representation. He pulled all of the decorations, fixtures and miscellanea from his parlor wall, and washed it over with a cleaner. He didn't care how the paints looked on the wall: the important part was to paint, not to look. This was art as a form of self-release.
He attacked it with incredible gusto. First the ears: he could not decide on one position, so he put in all of them, superimposed in multimedia, to demonstrate their expressive power. Next came the tail, in a similar fashion: fist outlined in pencil, then each different tail retraced with a different color of paint, and finally, all of them filled with different collage material. Then the feet, which began as a series of ovular pencil marks, stippled in paint.
Before he worked on the rest of the body, he decided that the feet needed a context. He drew at first a line for a floor, which soon became a technicolor still-life; a psychedelic re-working of his own living room. The body, which came next, required a careful study of the cat, who had become lethargic over the past several hours, and was now sleeping in a ball on the floor. Harvey petted it carefully, to find all of the creases and bumps in its gentle body, and immediately went to his "canvas", where he outlined all of its features in striking color. The effect of fur was achieved by throwing laden paintbrushes at the wall, and completed with sections of carpeting removed from his dining room floor with scissors.
Nearly an entire day had passed when he completed the head and reworked the background. The only features left were the eyes. They plagued him; he knew that the eyes capture the soul, yet he could not think of an effective way to portray such a subject. This cat made him feel fire in his breath, lizards in his bowels, screaming tornadoes in his ears.
He took a break to pet the small animal, which hadn't seemed to move in hours. It was still curled in sleep, as though to tell him that it was content to be painted on a wall, and just the sight of it made Harvey happy. He fell asleep there, with his arm around the animal, and dreamt of wild oceans and flying and hurricanes of violent color, until he found himself lying in a field of lazy tulips, butterflies becoming peacock-colored stones falling from the sky until they became a pyre around him and were set aflame.
He awoke in a violent frenzy of inspiration, and ran to his backyard to collect rocks. He painted them and plastered them to the wall with epoxy glue. Hour after hour passed, and slowly the eyes filled, as with tears, until no space remained. Harvey then stepped back and rubbed his head, absentmindedly smearing paint in the remaining hairs on his head, and looked at the picture. It was perfect. He had never seen such perfect expression. He walked to the middle of the room, to get a better view, and sat down to pet the cat. It was dead.

Harvey was fired from his job within a week; he had effectively quit, as he hadn't been to the office in about as long. He got the call on a Friday afternoon; after he hung up, he stood silently next to the phone for a long time. He wasn't sure what to do. His life had lost direction. Notions of suicide floated in and out of his head, until he pulled himself out of the daze and thought long and hard.
Finally, for peace of mind, he went into his parlor. Memories flew by of all that had happened in this very room over so much of his life; but he knew that this was a different place, in look and in feel, than that one he had paid for years ago. This one was trashed, but it felt like a part of him. He stared at the giant Cat, into its eyes, which stared right back with poise and intelligence.
Harvey didn't know what to do. But he knew that he slept, and that his arms hurt from painting, and that he was poor, and that he was happy. He smiled at the cat, and the cat smiled back. Harvey felt peace.

Harvey didn't sleep. A man of thirty-nine, medium build, thinning brown hair, and a penchant for brown polyester, he had come home every night to maddening insomnia for nearly eight years. He had tried sleeping pills, aromatherapy, a psychiatrist, a sleep specialist, acupuncture, feng shui, seratonin, prostitutes, and illegal drugs. He just didn't sleep.
He had worked in the engineering department of a major corporation for a little over eight years, though why he did was a mystery to everybody, including himself. After twenty suicidal years of accounting and insurance sales, he had decided to go to engineering school; and although he couldn't remember actually having learned anything about engineering, the Karma gods seemed to be repaying him for a lifetime of drudgery and at least enough will power to return to school. This was the only reason he could figure for why he continued to get paid. He was unaware of any kind of technical knowledge or engineering ability that he might have, or be getting paid for. His job consisted of making copies, paper airplanes, bad jokes, and passes at female co-workers, as well as an overall contribution to the CO2 level of the workplace.
He came home every evening with a feeling that he'd lost the entire day and hadn't gotten anything out of it. He would feed his pet hamster, Larry, and then would sit down with a newspaper. He didn't care much about the world or the country, and most of the news didn't interest him, nor did he ever absorb any of it, but he still read the paper devotedly. Every night he would take out his pencil and spend hours drawing all over the paper: graceful, nude figures, still lives, houses: doodles. The pages were covered with them by the time he discarded the paper. This was the only part of the day that he enjoyed.
Insomnia gives the diseased a unique experience. Perhaps the most unpleasant kind of unhappiness possible without pain; a unique mixture of frustration, sheer anger, hatred for oneself, boredom, and confusion, and all to be suffered alone, amongst the sleeping corpses of a world of enemies, mocking in their very peacefulness, in their ability to achieve what the insomniac cannot. It is as though the body rebels against its own needs and desires. All of these things had run through Harvey's mind as he lay awake in the early morning hours, salvaging his evening newspaper and finishing the sketches. He spent most of his evening on them, revisited them all night long, and deposited them in the trash when the sun came up. It did not occur to him that his wasn't much of a life.

Harvey came home one Tuesday, a Tuesday that started out like any other Tuesday, spent the entire day being like any other Tuesday, and looked as though it was going to end up like any other Tuesday, to find a subtle difference. A small, gray cat, little more than a kitten, was crouched on his doorstep, as though waiting. It didn't make a sound when he approached it, and didn't have any idea that it was blocking the door, nor any intention of moving.
"Whatcha doing here, little guy?" Harvey stooped down, and couldn't resist petting it a little. It was terribly skinny; he could feel its ribs through its drooping fur, and it seemed to be shivering in the winter air. At first, it didn't seem to respond to his caresses, but after a while, it looked up at him with wide, green eyes, and started to purr. "Alright, I'll give you some scraps, or something. But get out of my door." He picked it up with more difficulty than he expected. It mewed in dismay as he placed it beside the door, which he proceeded to unlock, open, and close behind him.
The first thing he saw upon entering was the cat. It was curled up on top of a stack of papers on his easy chair, and seemed to be sleeping already. Harvey looked at the key and then the door with a little surprise, to find the door half-open, and he realized that he must not have shut it properly. He did so, and then walked over to the animal, intending to remove it from his house, but as he looked at it closely, his heart softened a little. The cat was too skinny and cold for him to refuse it succor for a few short hours. He didn't realize it, but he enjoyed the prospect of company. "I'll just fix you some scraps," he said to the cat, who did not respond.
He returned from the kitchen with some bacon and the skeleton of a chicken wing to find the scrawny thing with its paw halfway into Larry's cage. Larry was crouched in the corner, convulsing with fear. Harvey dropped the scraps, and ran shouting to chase the thing off. The cat jumped down nonchalantly, groomed itself a little, and wandered over to the scraps. It took the time out to shoot a face of disgust at Harvey, who glared right back, before it dove into the bacon.
After eating, the cat made itself comfortable on the easy chair, and Harvey sat down to his evening newspaper. The cat was silent, curled up in a pleasantly compact little package, and completely immobile. Harvey, entertaining a strange feeling of mutual contentment between himself and the animal, took up his pencil and began to draw.
The cat sat up almost immediately, and let out a long, soft mew. Harvey turned around to see what might be troubling it, to find himself staring right into its lean face. Its eyes seemed to glow; looking into them gave Harvey an odd feeling, as though he was looking into his own heart. He shuddered and turned back to his drawings. The cat jumped off of the chair and over to Harvey. It rubbed up against his legs, jumped onto the desktop to bump heads with him, and then settled in his lap. Harvey petted it absently, noting how soft its fur was despite its manginess. Whenever he picked up the pencil the thing seemed to purr; noting its appreciation for his drawing, Harvey named it Art.
With a few sad looks and some rather painful mewling, the thing convinced Harvey not to put it out for the night. "Alright," he told it. "You can stay here for the night, but tomorrow you'll either leave or I'll take you to a shelter." Art looked at him pitifully. "And if you don't behave, you're going out tonight." The cat seemed to understand this; it lowered its head and curled up in the chair.
Something curious happened that night. Harvey fell sound asleep as soon as he hit the pillow, and slept solidly for ten-and-a-half hours. He was late to work because of it.
When he stepped out of his room at eight in the morning, he found Art curled peacefully in front of his door, purring softly. He quietly fixed it some scraps, and, noticing evidence that the cat had been trying to get into Larry's cage again, put several heavy books on top of it. Feeling heady from such a full night's sleep, he decided to let the cat stay until he came back after work.
Insomnia's effects on the diseased during the day are in fact more profound than those suffered at night. Everything seems to move too quickly; the insomniac finds himself moving and thinking at a much slower pace than the rest of the world. Having a tendency to hallucinate slightly, and as everything seems much more dreamlike in general to the perpetually tired, the diseased attaches less importance to regular occurrences; he doesn't take anything seriously, and it does not occur to him that he should.
Even more profound than this, however, is the shock to the diseased of a day taken on a good night's sleep after year upon year of hopeless insomnia. All of the boredom and listlessness which had characterized Harvey's work persona for as long as anyone could remember fell away, and were replaced by something new: nerve-wrenching fear. The world had sped up, and he was not prepared to cope with it. He suddenly became aware of all of the things that he was supposed to be doing, and was in fact being paid for; he noticed the annoyance, arrogance and actual hatred projected by his coworkers, which he had never noticed previously. They were almost tangible to him. Even the loud noises of the copy machine and the hum of his computer were enough to startle him.
Harvey came home to find that the cat had eaten Larry, and was staring greedily at the birds outside. When he stepped through the door, it came up to him immediately and rubbed up against his hand. He felt too startled to be angry at it, and merely sat down to his newspaper.
The words, which he usually skimmed right over without absorbing, suddenly jumped off the page at him, clear and understandable and impossible to ignore. He sat back, surprised at what he had been missing. He felt as though he had entered a new world, a world where everything was relevant; a new place where words and events and time really meant something.
He shook his head and tossed the paper aside, suddenly unsure of what to spend the next several hours doing. He looked at the cat and, having completely forgotten his previous conviction to remove it from his home, scooped it up in one arm and took it out the door with him, leaving behind his coat and hat.
Harvey took Art to a spot he knew from his childhood. It was a small park in the middle of the city, with a pond that froze and ducks that walked on the ice, begging for scraps. Most of the important events of his early life had been reviewed by him right there, looking at the ducks. Their absurd grace and pleasing shape gave him pause, helped him think.
Now he felt a need to come back here again; his head was so full he could hardly bear it, and he felt he had a perspective that he hadn't had for as long as he could remember. It struck him as odd that the one day when he felt the best he had in nearly eight years had been so dominated by a startling realization that his work (and by extension, his life) made him feel awful.
His taking the job had been a direct result of some of the things his father had told him as a young man. He had never been disillusioned by dreams of art, music, athletics, or science. His father had told him straight that all that mattered was money, that he would learn a trade-and, quite honestly, Harvey had never had much of an opinion on the matter. His interests had always been in avoiding responsibility, and they remained so when his father sent him to college, got him a job in this business, and then that; up until his current job, which he had gotten simply because he couldn't think of anything better to do. His return to school had been an attempt to stray from this path of least resistance-but ultimately he had decided that he was nothing more or less than supremely mediocre, and had applied for a job that reflected that fact.
He stayed at the park for most of the evening, thinking about his life-his job, his father, his house, and his wife, who did not stick in his mind as much as he had thought she would-until the sun went down over the willow trees, and his mind was silenced, struck by the beauty. He watched the last rays brush across the clouds like watercolor strokes; he had never realized before how the very last light washed upwards like a crashing wave before retreating into the softly darkening twilight hues. Harvey smiled, picked up Art, went home, and slept for eighteen hours.
When he woke up the next day, late again, he couldn't bear the idea of going to work. His mind was consumed with the thought of the sunset. The blazing colors burned streaks across his memory, vivid in his mind whenever he closed his eyes, as though taunting him, daring him to capture them with his own hand. Harvey skipped work and went shopping for art supplies.
When he finished the skyscape in watercolor and acrylic paint, he moved on to another of the fiery images stamped in his psyche, and after that, another. Canvas after canvas flew from his hands, filling up his apartment; whether they were good art was beyond him, and his judgment was not concerned with it. He felt obsessed with making them, with the ability and opportunity to fill canvases with sheer color.
He remembered people who had been important to him and their faces flashed though his balding head.  Crying at their inexpressible beauty, he captured their memories in vivid colors, throwing paint at the canvases like bullets at enemies, until the emotive motion exhausted him and he slept a dreamless reverie atop a pile of drying canvases. He awoke with a vision of the most profound portrait ever, to find the cat curled in a small ball in his line of sight. In a flash of inspiration and sheer creative desire, he knew he had to have the animal captured. He wanted to steal its very essence and plaster it against a canvas. Right then and there, covered in paints which matted his hair and stained his clothing, Harvey stood up and began the portrait.
He began the outline in pencil, but somehow found it lacking in expression, and began using a medley of colored pencils and pastels. He stood back and looked at his work, scowled, and threw it away. He needed more.
He started out this time with a basic outline: an oval. He put in the tail and the ears, the only parts that felt important to him just yet: the expressive parts. Colors flew as he attacked the canvas with paints, watercolors, pencils, pastels, food coloring; anything he could use.
After some time, he felt dissatisfied. He stopped for a minute and looked at the thing, the source of so much confusion and inspiration. The cat had been wandering around him for hours, staring at his work, as though with silent encouragement. He decided that a subject which held such a huge image in his mind deserved a proportionally large space for representation. He pulled all of the decorations, fixtures and miscellanea from his parlor wall, and washed it over with a cleaner. He didn't care how the paints looked on the wall: the important part was to paint, not to look. This was art as a form of self-release.
He attacked it with incredible gusto. First the ears: he could not decide on one position, so he put in all of them, superimposed in multimedia, to demonstrate their expressive power. Next came the tail, in a similar fashion: fist outlined in pencil, then each different tail retraced with a different color of paint, and finally, all of them filled with different collage material. Then the feet, which began as a series of ovular pencil marks, stippled in paint.
Before he worked on the rest of the body, he decided that the feet needed a context. He drew at first a line for a floor, which soon became a technicolor still-life; a psychedelic re-working of his own living room. The body, which came next, required a careful study of the cat, who had become lethargic over the past several hours, and was now sleeping in a ball on the floor. Harvey petted it carefully, to find all of the creases and bumps in its gentle body, and immediately went to his "canvas", where he outlined all of its features in striking color. The effect of fur was achieved by throwing laden paintbrushes at the wall, and completed with sections of carpeting removed from his dining room floor with scissors.
Nearly an entire day had passed when he completed the head and reworked the background. The only features left were the eyes. They plagued him; he knew that the eyes capture the soul, yet he could not think of an effective way to portray such a subject. This cat made him feel fire in his breath, lizards in his bowels, screaming tornadoes in his ears.
He took a break to pet the small animal, which hadn't seemed to move in hours. It was still curled in sleep, as though to tell him that it was content to be painted on a wall, and just the sight of it made Harvey happy. He fell asleep there, with his arm around the animal, and dreamt of wild oceans and flying and hurricanes of violent color, until he found himself lying in a field of lazy tulips, butterflies becoming peacock-colored stones falling from the sky until they became a pyre around him and were set aflame.
He awoke in a violent frenzy of inspiration, and ran to his backyard to collect rocks. He painted them and plastered them to the wall with epoxy glue. Hour after hour passed, and slowly the eyes filled, as with tears, until no space remained. Harvey then stepped back and rubbed his head, absentmindedly smearing paint in the remaining hairs on his head, and looked at the picture. It was perfect. He had never seen such perfect expression. He walked to the middle of the room, to get a better view, and sat down to pet the cat. It was dead.

Harvey was fired from his job within a week; he had effectively quit, as he hadn't been to the office in about as long. He got the call on a Friday afternoon; after he hung up, he stood silently next to the phone for a long time. He wasn't sure what to do. His life had lost direction. Notions of suicide floated in and out of his head, until he pulled himself out of the daze and thought long and hard.
Finally, for peace of mind, he went into his parlor. Memories flew by of all that had happened in this very room over so much of his life; but he knew that this was a different place, in look and in feel, than that one he had paid for years ago. This one was trashed, but it felt like a part of him. He stared at the giant Cat, into its eyes, which stared right back with poise and intelligence.
Harvey didn't know what to do. But he knew that he slept, and that his arms hurt from painting, and that he was poor, and that he was happy. He smiled at the cat, and the cat smiled back. Harvey felt peace.

As I look in the mirror, I'll tell you what I see. I see a different reflection staring back at me. I see someone I do not want to be. I see somebody with an act to please everyone around me. I think I'm in quicksand getting sucked into the ground. I wish more than anything my father was around. Down, deep down in darkness I go. Why I feel this way I really don't know. I look at everyone acting all the same. The only way to tell apart is by name. When I hear my name it doesn't seem to belong there. I think of a girl being who people think she should be. Does anyone really know me? So I wake up and put on the act. For all of he boys I may attract. I want to be wild. I want to be free. But according to everyone that's what I shouldn't be. What is more stressing to be me or another?. It's a very sorry world the way we judge each other.

Did you forget my number?
Did you forget to call?
Do you not have a phone?
Or did you even try at all?

Did you forget I'm here?
Forget that I exist?
Forget your Supposed to love me?
Forget I need your kiss?

You make me so upset,
and I feel so dead inside.
Because your never here,
and when you are you always lie.

Everyday I fear you'll leave me,
on this earth all alone.
Although you'll be happy,
up in your new home.

I'll have no dad my special day,
to walk me down the aisle.
I refuse to believe it,
My friends say I'm in denial.

Can't you see I love you,
I need you here with me.
And the days I miss the most
are those when I called you
DADDY.

As the clouds grow darker, I lay a single rose across the neatly made bed. This dreary night would be my last. The weather outside even fit the mood that seemed to suck every drop of life from the suffocating room. Thunder clashed, lightning flashed. I wasn't going to wimp out now. I had already gone to far. I'd already reach the point and my mind, and body, screamed out to me that it was the point of no return. I ran a finger across the silver blade before allowing my eyes to travel to the other weapon laying across my desk, aside the knife. Both could be quick, and hopefully, painless. I couldn't decide which to use. All I knew, though, that no longer would I feel pain nor suffering. And for once, I let myself drift off to the times I was teased and joked about.. suddenly, I was in a school, drifting alone through the halls, books in hand. Staring at the ground, their laughter became clear suddenly. Clear as crystal. I couldn't bare it. Blindly, I ran towards the bat!
hroom, hoping it'd create somewhat of a comfort. But no, I was wrong. I entered the bathroom and they turned, the better ones then I. They pointed and whispered ; I knew what they were saying. Again, I whirled around and brushed past everyone without a second glance. Everything around me was collapsing, becoming nothing but a black hole. I ran along the halls, stumbling once or twice, but regaining my balance and continuing my journey. Alas, I had reached the doors! I burst through the doors, allowing the suns warmth wash over me, hoping to relieve me of the unbearable pain, but no help did it offer. As the bell rang, I hurried off to my bus and slunk into my seat in which I fell into a suicidal sleep. Another crack of thunder disturbed me from my thoughts. Noticing my hand was tightly gripping the edge of my desk, I pulled it away and snarled. No longer was I going to continue to play their pathetic games. I'd put it end to it real fast. Slipping a folded piece of paper fro!
m my pocket, I stared at it. Nobody would miss me, I was sure. They'd all forgotten about me already. They'd moved onto bigger and better things. All they worried about anymore were guys, parties, and their cliques. I was an outsider, outcast, a loner. I was nothing to them, nothing but trash. Glancing down at my favorite outfit, I shrugged, and unfolded the crinkled paper. This would be the last letter I'd ever write. Placing it beneath the rose, I smoothed out the bedspread once more. My room was in tip-top shape. And I'd even left a few notes, diaries, and other personal belongs scattered in hidden places about the room. They'd find them, eventually, and read my past. The letter was meant to help them, to guide them to find my personal belongings. Suddenly, the world came crashing down on my shoulders ; a weight I could not bare. I turned to give myself one last look in the mirror, and then, I heard it loud and clear- BANG! Startled, I sat up straight in my bed staring of!
f into the darkness. I rubbed my eyes thoughtfully. It had only been a dream.

I can feel myself tapping my feet
I do that when I’m nervous.
I can taste the sticky sour of a dry mouth.
I can see the issues running through my head-
What will happen?  Will I be ok?
I can smell breakfast cooking downstairs,
but I’m not there. 
I can hear silence,
 a silence that is so deafening that I want to scream. 
Anxiety is pin, a color so innocent,
yet sometimes it’s loud and wild. 
And that’s just before I get out of bed. 

Little puppet,
She was the big actress,
Strings,
The clouds,
Cold and rainy,
A bit crisper,
The performance,
Perfected,
Another day,
Just our shell,
Lessons to learn,
Little puppet,
And she never knew,
A classroom,
This laboratory,
She was the experiment,
Little puppet,
What you said,
And how you said it,
A patch in time,
The weight of it,
And we burst,
In love,
With the little puppet,
Never the big actress.

I follow the ant in the middle of the line.
I am at the very end,
Afraid of getting stepped on.
Tripping over every pebble,
While watching out for my safety
And wanting to watch out for the safety of,
That one special ant in the middle.
I am the one following,
And she, the one leading.
Wanting to make sure that no one steps on us.

I care about that one ant,
And only a few others.
I don’t even think,
Or care about the many others between us.

To most of the other ants,
That ant in the middle of the line,
Knows who she is,
Where she’s going,
And why.
Only she,
A couple others,
And I,
Know the real truth.
We are all following the ant at the beginning of the line,
And None of us know who we are,
Where we are going,
Or Why.
Occasionally,
We will split up into two groups,
I follow the ant in the middle.

All I know is that,
I look up to the one special ant in the middle of the line.
Whether she looks up to an ant is a mystery,
And so is the identity of the ant at the beginning.

But,
I still wish I could be
That one special ant in the middle of the line.
Even if she’s not perfect.

There is a place in the world
Which I fly to at night
Where the darkened night
Is illuminated with light
And the sudden brightly lit sky
Is in my mind, in this place that I go

There are sliver-lined wings
On which the angels fly
Yellowish pink light illuminates the sky
As I fly further into the moonlight on wings of gold,
Outstretched to my souls content.

They let off a bright shimmering soft glowing light,
As I become one with the night a dancer wobbles back and forth
On a crooked base, she spins faster each time her chain is pulled,
 Whispering as they pull her back, unafraid as she dives, spinning into the night.
Blades of wood and softer still foam adorn her shattered wings.
The lights are still, darkened now.

The house sags like a mourning mother on the death of her child
Holding him in her arms, she is a constant reminder of the darkness
That surrounds us. Her silent screams are a never-ending memoir
Of the words left unspoken.
Soiled light, coated in soot from the fire devouring everything,
It moved slowly on, an unwelcome visitor.
Precious memories, stolen from their minds.
The innocence that once reigned is gone from this town.
Tears of the Gods rain down upon the destroyed village.
 The sound echo’s from the tin roof like the cry from a forgotten child,
Unsilenced by his mother, he is alone, we are all alone.

Like a wave of blood
My hatred for myself
Engulfs my life
And
Crashes down on me,
Sweeps me away
My own doing
Self-destruction is
My way out
Of this hell
Where
Angels burn
And love
Cries for help
My own disturbing world
I can’t let anyone in
I can’t go out
For I feel numb today
Every day
All the time.

may I take your order?
we make eye contact
my outer skin is just going through the motions
as my inner senses try to read you
frantically searching for a sign
that you still remember how things used to be
do you ever think about when I was yours
back when we were still together
it has to sometimes cross your mind
doesn't it?
I can't take it anymore
I avert my eyes
pay too much attention to that insignificant slip of paper
on which I write what you desire
I turn and walk away without looking back
I take in a deep breath of air
please slow my beating heart
God has a sick sense of humor in creating this situation
I am again your servant
although now a slightly different kind
nevertheless I still run at your beck and call
to fulfill your every need without question

Who is that girl
In the mirror I see
See her, Can't you see her
I know that's not me
She's pretty and perfect
Is that all a lie?
Most is an image
That will quickly die
I see her at night
The tears on her face
All I hear her say
"My life's such a disgrace"
Why don't they understand
They can't see the real me
All they can see
Is what they want to believe
They think that's the truth
But it is such a lie
She is only a child
Now I know why she cries

As I remember it before,
It appeared in my mind as paradise.
With no single frail thing in its content,
It was both welcoming and safe.
A huge maple tree marked its entrance,
With a scent of heaven adoring its interior.
It was an arctic escape in July,
As well as a peaceful retreat
>From snowy skies in the season of giving.
When I ponder about this magical place,
My mind takes me far away from where I am,
And suddenly the clock turns back.
I find myself remembering the days
When my life was simple and not unpleasant,
Days when I received joy just from being
Within its walls and sitting by the fire.
But now it is a dreadful place
And I dare not to go back home.
For walking through the entry way
Is now a walk into the wilderness.

2002 - 04 - 02

Hi ladies and gentlemen!
Eric is my name and the poetry is my game.

When you look at me,
All you can see
Is the girl,
With the nice hair,
With the rosy cheeks,
With the perfect body, short and skinny,
You see my big smile.
What you see is the girl you think I am,
The girl I used to be,
However, I changed,
And now
You'll never be able to truly know me,
If all you can see is the outside
I want to be different,
I'm sick of being the same,
Everyday I find out more about myself,
And everyday it surprises me more,
Because I am no longer the little girl in the pink dresses
Or the pre-teen wanting so much to fit in,
I'm not the girl in the jeans and sweatshirt either,
I'm the girl who's inside of me