He went to study and I walked on, accompanied by the bright click of my old worn heels. Brighter than my mood. I am weighed down by my faults, the bird around my neck. Can you see it? You don't see me... The impatient flickering of a thousand artificial suns light up the night in harsh relief- a chiaro scuro world, skewed. Electricity permeates the very air; it croons to me, so I tune my humming to its droning B. Once the constant buzz drove me mad, but now I find it reassuring, our man made universe's private cosmic symphony. You don't hear it, do you? Some people forget how to listen. I switch perspectives and watched the colors backwards, the world like a film negative. The trees reach out in angry red, so I change to black and white. The gray proves too distracting, so I repaint one last time, the world now in shades of sickly orange. Leave my judgment to the sky. The dying light of the stars is mourned by the pendulum moon. Venus turns a baleful eye on my wandering footsteps. There are tears here somewhere. A willow commiserates with me, but she is innocent and I reek of sin. A moth floats past, recognizing a kindred spirit. Pale sick flowers crowd the bushes like maggots. The walls are oozing blood, thick and scarlet and pungent, and I am frightened because the world has begun to rot, and I am the only one who sees. Perhaps it sours just for me--but you cannot tell, because others fear what they don't understand, send it far away alone so that they can rest easy, undisturbed by waking nightmares of the lost. I do not tell, because it is mine, intensely so. Dragon like, I guard my secrets. I cobble it all together, your world and mine, the beautiful and the scary and the tactile and the visionary, send it spinning. You may not recognize it, but I love my kaleidoscope world.

she lies broken, bloodied, raw,
haunted by the jackal's call,
crawling through the jagged shards
of hearts turned hard

things get hazy, and i'm going crazy
because i'm so tired of trying not to think-
orange blossom sunrise, is that dew in my eyes?
or is something else making me weep?
as promised, i dreamed of you. did you dream of me too?
the desert is lonely at night.
You're still my light

Lights flicker when I walk by.
I don't bat an eye;
I've always had a somewhat
electrical
influence, if you will
or even if you won't,
'cause tonight the moon is singing
of orange trees and memories
and I've got to catch me a dream.

Continuing with my fun quotes of the day...

"You can't organize a war on the basis of lies. You can't bomb a people just in case." -Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero

"Every once in a while the technology and terrorist supply chains intersect — like last week. Reuters quoted a Spanish official as saying after the Madrid train bombings: "The hardest thing [for the rescue workers] was hearing mobile phones ringing in the pockets of the bodies. They couldn't get that out of their heads." " -Thomas Friedman

This was just such a horrible image I felt duty-bound to remember it.

"We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time."

– T. S. Eliot, from Four Quartets, final section

"It isn't that we aren't rational-We are. But there are limits to reason." -Robert McNamara, fmr. Defense Secretary

Does the scent of summer's sweetness
In the reign of long nights
Bring remembrance of delights
Or enhance despair?
Do you care to notice when your heart beats?
Have you grown so cold
That you don't know
or notice
one who counts the beatings
of your
calloused
winter
heart

schism
shattered like the mirror that fell from the wall,
fragments of the fairest of them all
lie bleeding on the ground;
hear the keen of the huntsman's hounds,
for the queen's breath smells of a once beating heart
stopped by jealousy's deadly art.
tear the damned lost girl in two
even broken mirrors speak true.

I know myself best in the dark-
light fixes my form,
Far from it I am free
to be all things great and small
that make me.

This is an old one, but I'm fond of it, perverse creature that I am.


Our Lies
Bloodied and snarled in a trap of my own making,
the bitter truth like vinegar in my wounds.
oh, how deceived, how did i believe?
I wanted so much to have faith in you.
To have faith. You made the world beautiful.
Lies, Lies, Lies,
like acid lacings of the soul,
Destroy me wholly, just don't leave me
lying broken and hopeless.
Or else run. Run!
For to escape from a trap, you must act without pity.
Pity? That's a concept
no more real than your honesty.
There is only deceiver and deceived.
And pathetically,
I still want to believe.