"The Right Eye" asked the Wizard, "do you know what it is?"

"No."

"Your Past Window. Every second moves into the past. Even now, this moment flows behind you. Without your past, you have no clear hope of a future child."

"I see."

"And what is Left? If you are not Right?"

"Wrong?"

"Your left eye is your Well of Shame. It is where you see all your sins against your fellow man. We all see with the same eyes. But what will you choose to see child? Because you have a choice."

It's not glamorous....

The dreams are, the somedays. The actual work? It's f*cking work.

The compulsion, the dream? Kills itself everyday the minute you clock in.

It's imaginary suicide, day after day.

Ah, fancy, writing you say? Must be lovely. Must be dreamy. You look at a stack of books sitting on a shelf and you can imagine the joy that went into it's creation, the $5 thrill you have reading it. That parallel world like your own but completely different. Dreamy. Just dreamy.

It's a f*cking nightmare.

Everything is work, waking up, pimping your hair, the driving in, the clocking in, the staying in till the clock strikes three.

You can imagine the big promotion, but that takes commitment. More than you've given yet. More than you've earned.

You are your very own Cogsly Cog, bitching about the production and the pennies and that one word that will make it all click.

Such a fantastical f*cking myth. Fantasy...

Finished chapter 13 did you say? DING, fries are up.

It's not that easy, fooling a fool.

I feel like Sausalito. The slow fog rolling down the side of the hill covers everything, hidden behind something eerie and beautiful at the same time. A certain safety in the release from view, even if I know it's still there. I feel, or not feel really, the novacaine in a lower lip. I read the pages of a book, and realise I have to read it all over again because nothing has registered....

I feel dizzy, and pointless; emotionless. I feel blank. Hearing underwater.

And feel is entirely the wrong word. I am writing this and it has no connection to what it is I'm NOT feeling, in a sense. To what it is I let go.

One tiny blue pill, one tiny concession on the battle uphill, but more on that tomorrow I think.....

Back to the blank pages of the nameless book in the colorless sleeve.

The roar.

The jackhammer pounds.

The welding crackle.

Familiar sounds.

I’m not chained down to a desk.

A nest.

I’m free to spit and swear and kick shit

unlike the rest.

The blueprint a scatter

of blueprint lines.

My blueprint guide

mapping out time.

And I don’t have

to take it home.

When the afternoon comes

and the chain fence closes.

Cuz I hit it

with a hammer.

I killed it with one good stroke

in the clamor.

I threw it from a ladder’

Saw it crash into the dust.

I beat it with a sander.

Removed all its rust.

I pushed it over the edge.

Watched it fall and break.

I piled it up

and got rid of its waste.

I wear so many labels I feel like an antique suitcase that's seen the world.

When I was in grade school, It was trouble, fat, stupid, ugly, distracted, exasperating, defiant. I would go get on the merry-go-round and the kids would get up and run away. For some reason the kids at the bus-stop targeted yours truly. As an adult I don't blame them, children mock what they envy, or what intimidates them. I was smarter, funnier, talented, but dirt poor. That gave them an in.

As a teen, it was trouble, defiant, dishonest, depressed, distracted, disrespectful. I had pushed so hard against everyone that they threw their hands up and gave up on me. This is where I started to realize I was not like other people, not in that disillousion of grandeur way, but I was just different. Still, I thought it was cool that the rejects thought so much of me. I was the coolest loser to know. That was something, if I had nothing else. I sold pot behind the school library during breaks.

As a young woman, for the most part it wound up being depression, bi-polar, ADD, borderline. It was really none of those things particularly, pills couldn't fix it, because it wasn't something that needed medicating. I decided to medicate myself in an attempt to ignore my differences, and that didn't work. Mental health proffesionals couldn't figure me out any more than I could figure myself out. I once swallowed a bottle of pills and drove myself to the Brown County Mental Health center at 1am. They wouldn't let me in, told me to go to the hospital to be admitted. I drove all f*cked up back over tower drive bridge and at the stop light before the hospital, one of the hoses under the hood blew and steam came blowing out. I actually laughed, I took a right, went to my apartment, puked and went to bed. The next day I was fine.

So now, I do get depressed, I am distracted, I am a bit paranoid and lost. But I've accepted those things as a part of me, the part that will stay on the inside, I've learned to live around them. As I move through my life I gently peel those labels off one at at time. Some of them leave a mark they've been there so long. Some of them peel right off. Some of them I have to soak for a while because they are good and glued on.

But that's ok, one of these days I imagine I'll get them all off, and the world will no longer be able to tell where I've been.

Once upon a time in a land called Scum,

there was a little girl born with no thumbs.

She was awkward and silly,

gave the other girls the willies.

Less evolved they thought,

with her eight fingers she fought.

What they didn’t know was,

behind the cave girl’s scars,

she was a hero in her head full of dreams and blue stars.

She ran from the mix, tripped over sticks,

she climbed the hill and screamed when she fell.

But she got to the top you know, that eight fingered kid.

with dirty knees and scraped knuckles she no longer hid.

Turning around she saw that whole valley.

A fire circled the Earth, ending those peanuts in the galley.

And now there she sits, on her mountain near the fire,

hand on one knee, a smiling canvas for dead liars.

I'm a Beat and a Stuckist.

Money really is the root of all evil, cept for the rent and a few bags of bread for buyin bread. I've lived my life hard, I've said it a million times. I've been close to lost staring into the face of my face in the mirror, trapped far from life, same as running from death to the light. I don't need a new car, I need to BE in my skin. Answer all the whys. I don't sign my paintings because I don't want to be famous when I'm dead. I want life right now. I want the answers to all the questions of the universe and the only wisdom I have is knowing I'll never get em.

I am a beat, and I am a stuckist, I'm a million tiny moments that will be washed away into the mud in another hundred years leaving ahead of just one more kid staring at the sun, wondering why.

What can I do
if I can't see with clarty
the fine details of my life
The sounds of my memories
The smells of my history

What can I do if I lay dying
and my only wealth
is in the quality
of the past

What can I do to gather it up
and hide it
in the fabric of my mind

I remember a small girl in a field of tall grass
with long hair and a tiny fistful of flowers.
Tiny fists that could hold the awe of the world
with a big heart, no burdens no cares.

No history of loss she walked alone.
She wandered the road meeting devils with songs.
Got left at the wayside holding her soul her
tiny flowers gone.

But found her way back, face pressed in the grass,
the familiar smell she had known
Of believing in flowers new to the ground,
embracing them with arms that had grown.

The sun makes the leaves golden when it's cold,
it's a silly trick of the eyes.
There's a briskness in life that's somehow not real,
somehow a fanciful disguise.
Right now in this dry and hollow linen shell,
this prison that I've made.
I'm Wrapped up in safety ignoring what I feel
and my sanity slips and fades.
I keep meaning to move and wiggle my fingers,
do something, just try and feel.
Stretch my hard arms and feel my frozen feet,
nothing is anymore real.
To move and start breathing and thinking,
to face it.
Stir and get out of here, close to the street,
to embrace it.
Something happened in the changing and moving, I slipped.
It's black and I'm terribly lost.
I fell down that dark hole, forgot all my sight,
and I'm damned to the rising cost.
There's this tape on my eyes and my throat and I know
I can't breath. I can't breath!
What's up and down and left and what's right
somehow just can't be seen.
I breath on the window and write damned in the fog,
my finger trails so slowly.
Fighting to turn the locks, crack the hinges, break free,
the creaking so ghostly.

This wooden fence in these wooden hands and no one knows that I'm screaming on the inside because I'm so proud and so tough and I'm taking care of everyone but who is there to take care of me through the jabs and the insults and the years of disapointment and years of putting on a brave face and toiling through the death of my life and I'm dying slowly you see like the elm that made this fence and I'll just stand here till the sun wears me down and the wind blows me away gone dead forgotten because it's never ending like this wooden fence in these wooden hands and no one knows that I'm screaming on the inside because I'm so proud and I'm so tough and I'm taking care of everyone but who is there to take care of me through the jabs and the insults and the years of disapointment and years of putting on a brave face and toiling through the death of my life and I'm dying slowly you see like the elm that made this fence and I'll just stand here till the sun wears me down and the wind blows me away gone dead forgotten because it's never ending like this wooden fence in these wooden hands and no one knows that I'm screaming on the inside....

Memories.

Being ten and walking back from the pool with the cracked concrete chipping away into the water. Surrounded by a chain link fence leaning and curling. Eating a bologna sandwich on the porch in the heat looking at the tall grass and the dandelion wisps waiting for a wind. Picking at the paint peeling from the porch.

Dreams.

Wanting to be a famous painter someday, and live in New York in a tall building in a room the size of a warehouse. You could roller skate in there. You can see painting pictures taller than a tree. Such big dreams in vivid color turning to grey under the weight of the people holding you down.

Hope.

The ones you know who don't just kill themselves or each other, kill themselves with their vices. The rest go to prison or wind up in a dirty nicotine stained shack waiting out the inevitable. You know there's more to life, you actually get the hell out kid.

Saturday.

Taking the kids to the park, watching them run in circles and laugh, pushing them on swings that aren't broken. Watching a movie later in the day curled up on the couch with those little miracles, having a popcorn fight. Washing your car on Sunday, baking a lasagna. Getting the school and the work clothes washed for the bright and early morning around the corner.

Minding the gap.

You made it, right? But the space between the life you dreamed and the life you're living is wide. You have to remember the ten year old who thought anything was possible, who was living in big dreams. Remember to live. There's always more life you can fit into this trip. Make memories to take with you to the grave.

The loving

The day you meet. So innocent and special. The smiles, the yearning, the hope. You aren't jaded in those moments. Your hurts fall away, you forget you don't trust, you forget you aren't a believer. You fall prey to the twinkling eyes, the precious smiles, you believe the tales. You believe the stories, you want to believe the stories, and the endings.

The living

You become a person you won't recognize. You tell yourself what you need to hear, what you want to believe. You make up your own endings. You create stories to salve the small wounds you suffer, the broken dreams of perfection. There is still hope, there always is. It's a dream after all, you can still find yourself among the clouds you dwelled in when it all began, right?

The leaving

The wounds turn to scars. You become wise, and you return to yourself. What were the dreams you had? But you had them once before, didn't you learn? Didn't a part of you know? Of course. But the wanting got in the way, it blinded you, the wanting. You were so sure, so sure. And now again, walking on that path.......hoping no one sees you in the dark, where you are once again alone.

It's not the Poetry that matters most.

Words tell all do they?

And how do you take words

and make them mean exactly who you are?

Can you really reach the point?

Hand it to someone in a way they can see into you?

No misconceptions?

No deceptions?

Can you do all that with just words?

Can you say you are in my head

and know the knots and questions

and loyalties and insanities

and all the little happy endings?

If you really knew

there would be nothing to say.

There would be no questions or wonder

or agreements or speeches.

Words only tell a story.

They are grunts and hums

and trills used to make a picture

and the picture will always change.