I dragged my fingers through the sand and
asked myself how anyone could find this zen.
This fire eating at my mind, these gripping tensions breaking,
bursting through my veins.
I raked through the garden with the metal pronged toothpick,
my blood boiling like whistling pot.
Swung my arm, got up, turned around, lashed out at the first thing I saw.
Sand showered over fallen scattered shattered glass.
It was never meant to last.
The clouds have not parted.
The sky is still grey.
From the ground itself shines a bright phosphorescence,
which makes it look like day.
That is not to say that the cloud cover cannot lessen,
or that no ray of sunlight can ever shine through.
But, by giving up on dependence on the sun above, one can see that the truest light shines from me and you.
We walk this path along a road between fallen trees,
leading deep into our minds. Roads separate, side by side. I heard a crow call from your road and I stopped to turn around. It was not there. Or I could not see it. It was only an illusion. Illusion.
There may be another way to live, but if there is it has never been known to me. It’s the exact same to say that there could be another way to see. All of these perceptions, lenses, do they amount to anything when we can only know one? I cast them away, they are in doubt. Just an illusion.
Illusion, a lie. Real is what is near to me. Real is what I can touch, smell, feel, breath, know, think, perceive. I cannot perceive what others do. I cannot look the way others do. I never want to. I know the truth. I know my way is my way, the others are an illusion to me. An illusion.
Cast them off, these lies of empathy. Just because I can know things about you and what you feel does not mean I can feel it as you do, from your vantage point. I will never know how you feel. I can never know how you feel. To know is an illusion. Nothing more than an illusion.
Take it down like a painting covering a crack, throw it off like a mask. Destroy them. Crush it in your hand. I did. It felt amazing to me. Would it to you? Take a try, throw all you know away. Spin it around and turn it about face sharply, watch as it dissolves into illusion. A complete illusion.
We walk these paths, side by side, never crossing. Can they be crossed? Can one ever change lanes, lenses? My mind is my road, your mind your road, and perhaps there is only room for one on each. I will learn to try to know you. I will learn where the illusion falls. If it is the void between minds, I will know you. If the illusion is the idea of empathy, then may we continue in our own thoughts, never knowing another’s. Or perhaps, may we give in to the comfort of illusion.
Inside her mind was a chrome sphere.
It bent things to see as she wished and made the rest disappear.
I removed it to inspect and behold it’s shine,
and was shocked to see that in it, the reflection was mine.
“I dropped it.”
“Pick it up.”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“It shattered.”
“Glue it back!”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“I lost the pieces.”
“Can you find them?”
“I can’t.”
“I can help.”
I know. This is not the first time I have said that I don’t “really care.”
It never made a difference that you were there.
I hold you close.
I stare up to count to clouds.
Distant.
You ask what I meant.
I said what I mean.
Impossible to reach.
Sometimes I wonder what it was all about. Others I wonder why I fought back.
It could have been so easy to say yes, to give in.
It was unheard of, untold of. From thin air it came out of.
Like a gust of wind it moved. So fast it lacked sound, traced only by its path.
It moved surroundings as it went, a phantom presence.
I saw that gust everyday. Knew it was special, but did not know what to say.
Then you saw it and I knew it was real. We gave it a name, which gave it a form.
The form gave it power, it gave it strength. It moved as it had, yet now visually traced.
The creature was large, ungainly and horrid.
Now seen by all, changed from harmless to violent. Continue reading
Break on through let no one stop you. Push the knife of life harder. Find what’s to be, ways to see that where you are is where you ought to be.
Look outside; it’s snowing. Catch a snowflake on your tongue. Don’t let it melt. If it is raining, freeze it into a cube. Take the cube and make it an egg. Hatch a plan.
At the root of that plan should be health. At the buds should be aggression, acceleration. The stems are paths to take. Follow one like a stream. Ore in hand. Float down, down, down. Find the falls. Let them freeze too. Walk out of your kayak before it melts with the snowflake and look for land. Follow the lighthouse to shore. Feel the sand under your feet, in your hand. Throw the sand and watch it fall like the frozen-cube-egg-plan-rain. Shake it like a snow-globe. Like a ball. Throw the ball. Let the air catch it and throw it back. Continue reading
Only one post today but it’s good… a story!
Faster
By Zachary Storch
Jeff Hansen watched another tree fall to the whirling blades of the tree clearer, hearing the lurching of wood followed by a loud thud as the trunk landed onto the cleared grass, throwing up a cloud of musty dirt. The smells of sap and overworked, overheating motors was carried through the logging camp on sawdust.
“How much is a log worth anyway?” Jeff shouted to Head Logging Supervisor Matt Kaleb.
“We don’t get paid by the tree Jeff, we get paid for clearing them all so buildings can be built,” Head Logging Supervisor Matt Kaleb smacked a mosquito off his arm as it jabbed into him. It fell down to the ground, dead like the trees but silent. “We got someone coming down here today who says he has something that will change our work forever, make it faster.” Continue reading
I wrote this awhile ago and decided I should post it.
The Boy and the Ghost By Zachary Storch
It was a plain summer evening. The sun was just beginning to set, and Gregory Smith was outside playing ball with his friends. The summer was a good time to be young; free from the bonds of elementary school to enjoy the warm breeze and the world around him, after his mom made him put on sunscreen of course. He heard his mother now, calling him and his friends in for dinner. Isaac Colton kicked the ball away, and it rolled out of their Continue reading