Empty

It's a wonder what a few books will do when neatly lined up on the mantle piece.

There shall be no sleep here tonight. This room is changed. Though everything is still present, it sits it different places and the light falls in different ways - the shadows take different shapes. It is new. There can be no comfort in new things.

Though drowsiness pulls attentively at the eyelids, there will be no sleep.

March: Aries

Aries March 20 — April 19
If you leave the house with an industrial magnet hidden under your hat this week, you could lose your footing when the bus arrives. The fates are sending you messages on street signs. If the "Don't Walk" sign flashes your name in Morse code, you might want to step into traffic. Don't.

-Taken from ReadWritePoem.

Beneath my hat and hair is a world of ideas and they're out to get them. I know. Whenever I cross a street they lurch towards me, rage evident in their lumbering forms. They're fast, faster than they look and they tower over me as I am pulled away. Until that moment I remain unaware of their presence, lost in the life and activity around me as it paints pictures in my mind. The pictures are prettier than real-life, imbued with such shuddering colours that I can do nothing but halt my movements and stare - the oncoming traffic can wait.

I can feel the earth in my stride, it calls to me, telling its secrets so that I may write them down with the flourish of my pen. Don't walk, not yet. My mind fumbles over the words confused over their intentions even though the meaning is clear. I feel the pull of the tarmac. I hear it whispering sweetly in my ear, though it is far away. Don't walk. Please, don't walk.

My foot readies to step on the road.

And I'm on the floor, panting, as it roars past. A concerned face sits behind me, still holding onto my arm. The earth breathes a sigh of relief but I only look confused.

Crystals

It's dark outside but I didn't notice. My eyes are fixed on the screen but occasionally glancing at the crystals that sit beside. They're pretty and free from dizzying thoughts, like those that are in my head. They're beautiful, sparkling colours, delicate in their very existence. They'd need only a small touch to be shattered into the white dish they stand in. They confuse me. I don't understand how they work and I cannot touch them to find out. I crave answers to their beauty. But the answers won't come from looking at it.

I sit back and sigh. They remain a mystery and my eyes remain enthralled.

RE: Going Without

But what if the sleep does not claim me and the nagging gets stronger? What then do I do with my time in the late hours? What then do I use to distract myself from its pull?

My mind tells me: use what you know, what you don't have, what you do. But it's hard to memorise when the words jumble in my head, tickled by the fingers of the nagging hand. My sheet is crumpled but I cling to it. It cannot uncurl my clasping fingers even though it tries. But what if the sleep never comes? My fingers loosen. It will. Tighten once more. It's just lack of sleep, the tiredness eating at my form - it's nothing. It just makes you weak, not having that bliss of rest and it likes it when you're weak, sleep tells me. I nod, agree. You're right.

It is in the late hours that I wonder about myself, about what drives me and what fails me, about the nagging in my mind and the sneaking at the corners of my eyes. And before I sleep I doubt myself and I wonder 'what are you doing here?'

Silence.

Need

It clings to you, like something out of a too-old sci-fi movie, and it doesn't want to let go. It makes everything slow and sticky and hard to get out of your system. It needs no reasoning, it just is. That's what they say. But it hates you, such writhing hate that it could hardly breathe if a breath was something it needed. Yet, it needs you, loves you, wants you to stay - wants to stay with you. So it sticks, clings, claws with all its might. Sometimes it manages it.

Until you breathe. Close your eyes and realise that it's all over. It's finished. It's done with.

It changes hands and it's gone, with nothing but a green slip to remember it by.

RE: Performance

We're trying. We're laughing.

And we're good.

Wherever we end up, these are the times we'll remember. And we'll laugh.

Targets

Prints dance across warm faux-metal colours, painting their ideas into the program - it is funny that such logic, such a thing made from numbers, symbols and things that most don't understand can be made home to such creative thought, such vastness, so many worlds and peoples. It is strange that such freedom can be held under such a tight schedule. Two thousand a day, no less. More is allowed, more is always allowed, welcomed and respected. But never less.

Progress comes from these dancing fingers as they make their mark on the program, weaving such beauty that the program, if it had feelings, might collapse onto its hypothetical knees and pray to the spectacled gods that created it.

And it should.

The program pales beneath the life it holds in its hypothetical hands as the dancing print-steps continue on in regimented specs of progress.

Two thousand a day, no less.

Words

The travel in great numbers, quickly spreading their rune-like shapes across the white of my page.

Decorating

It's like playing chess, having a backdrop such as this - an eternal game, as eternal as it gets in the ferocious grip of cyberspace. Things change here, a lot of things. It only takes a slash or a space or a semi-colon and something is different. Not noticeable. But still - different. It's your move, sir.

There are always things to do and things to change, little details that aren't quite right and need a little thought before altering. One might not even notice them once they are changed... but knowing they have been leave satisfaction and pride.

The welcome mat is always important. It must be pleasing, inviting - unless, of course, you don't want anyone to visit. Then one would ask, why? Why are you here? This place is so public, so far from private that you must want a visitor. And you would sit. Smile a little and say once again: It's your move, sir.

Pro and Prod

Pro is controlling, he sits on the grey matter with that spark in his eye and that smirk that gets exactly what it wants. Trying to talk to him leads only to a snappy remark; "Only friends call me Pro." Others don't get a name for him, they aren't worthy of addressing him but they know who he is and what he embodies. He won't talk to them after that. He's very stubborn.

Prod mopes. Sat in his little cave beneath the grey matter Pro keeps him locked up. Some say they are one in the same. A schizophrenic separated into two imaginary bodies. Prod is not happy but anyone can call him Prod - he has many friends.

He doesn't see them. Not in his little, pulsing cave. Pro stops him from doing everything and anything he wants. He isn't allowed. He's bound to doing exactly what Pro says.

He isn't happy.

But sometimes, if he concentrates and tries hard enough, he can slip through the bars and move up to the surface without Pro noticing. He smiles then. And get's everything done before going back to the little cave Pro keeps him in.

You

You are the awkward phone call, you're the alarm that doesn't go off. You're the food that's gone cold and the ice that melted too quickly. You're the shower that's too warm or too cold. You are the sleep that ended before its time and wouldn't come back to life until another night was over.

You're the mediocre dream, with no excitement or colour. You're the nightmare that won't go away. You're the headache that sticks messily to my head like hardened honey. You're illness, the cancer, the tumour. You're the strawberry scent of death, cold on my neck and my cheeks.

You're the darkness that I can't see through.

You're the cold in my room, the thick, insufferable, mindnumbing cold in the corners that creeps without a sound into my eyelids as I sleep.

Snowblind

It's not that usual blindness one gets up mountains from the sun's reflection on the never-melting snow, it's a different kind. More invasive. And yet, in its own way, it's enjoyable - the feel of the cold on my eyes and closed under my lids, the way it floats down upon them when it knows I don't want to blink, can't blink and won't blink. It's cruel but I enjoy it, want it even.

Everything is a haze of glowing amber, shapes of muted colours float past slower than they do in reality - everything's slower when snowblind.

In slow-motion, my life flutters past upon the wings of an all-too-freezing moth trying to make it's way to the warm light behind a window pane. I see moments in sepia tone, and I think, I remember. I close my eyes and melt them away.

Open again, I look up to the sky. Shimmering diamonds on blue velvet.

9:34, 10:46, 10:55

Slowly it creeps, dragging itself round in those last, laboured pushes of life. But still, there's a light beat and rhythm - the same as there always was. Though it is dying, the tick hasn't changed. It carries on, quest-like and determined. It longs only to live. Just one more day, just one more day.

It counts its last days with a soft tick and the slow-spinning of a skeleton head.

9:34, 10:46, 10:55

Hatter

He stares down at me, watching my every move with uneven, unblinking eyes.

The patron saint of the mad on his throne. There, upon my wall.

He stares down at me, fueling each word I write.

Sickness

The growls come, each more lengthy, needy than the next. But they're not as persuasive as they'd like. That feral begging falls on deaf ears as it fades away into the night. There's something oddly sympathetic about it, something pleading - a cry that arises the need or want to comfort. But it isn't enough. Again, the growls fail but still they come.

It's the emptiness that's sickening, rising and falling like a tide on a stormy night. But still, there's a will that beats against it, a will with no reason, no justification, not even a little bit of sense - but it's there and it's enough. It's a strange dilemma, a subtle sickness, far beyond any logical understanding.

Don't ask, it won't answer. It's not that easy, it's not as simple as a black and white photo of a lone, leaveless tree.

Some call it the sickness worth having.

It's not.

Birthday

Today, it's your birthday. And I'm thinking of you. Or rather the absence of you; the hole that, until recently, had gone unnoticed. It doesn't hit hard or even often and when it does I am struck with confusion rather than a dull hurt and bruise. But I don't ask why, I don't seek never-coming answers. My eyes don't cloud and showers do not pour from them. I do not miss you.

But still, it aches. A small ache, barely bigger than a five pence piece. Barely noticeable after it has landed, spun, toppled and found a place to rest. I can barely feel it if I don't go looking. But it's there.

You're not gone but you're not here either. You swing between - an indecisive child with an unknowingly cruel mind, picking on ants and next keeping them as pets, oblivious to the damage caused unless someone tells you. But they won't. I am the ant to your magnifying glass, to your ant farm filled with sand.

There's guilt there, between the cracks and tunnels, like the ant that got away. Being wrong, in the wrong. It's not your fault, they'd say as they cling to what little they know. But then the question would come. Then whose? Silence or hapless blame. An answer crafted with lies to cover up what isn't known. And I'd be back there, wondering, wandering. Waiting for your glass or farm to come again, trying to guess which it will be.

And it will repeat.

I'm thinking of you, for the the first time in eons, it seems. And it's your birthday. And I don't know if I miss you.

Sunday

Sunday is evident in this house, there's barely any noise and what noise there is is lazy and slow. It floats, sweeping past doors and making sure that any action that might have been planned is changed to resonant inaction, you might want to do it, you might have planned to do it with every detail spoken for and no room for error. But, Sunday is here. You're not going to do it.

Some are lucky, Sunday cannot change your mind if someone else, not in the house where Sunday currently haunts, has decided your plan of action then Sunday cannot stop you. Her ethereal features move to a frown when she realises she cannot keep you. She doesn't like it, not at all. The thought of her toys leaving her well-preseved play area is not one she enjoys or expects. When you do leave it, through your own will, she lets out a wail hoping that it will stop you in your tracks and bring you back. But it doesn't.

There are noises, getting louder as the time speeds past. Sunday begins to panic, the house is no longer sleepy, it is alive and moving. She's running out of time, soon she'll have to move on and find another house and more people to keep sleeping and calm and unproductive.

She closes her eyes, a frown still on her face and a pout on her lips, turns to the door and slips through, as if she were never there at all.

Stars

There are no stars here, the world is dark and the clouds take a purplish hue. It's different here, things have different meanings. The world is topsy-turvy and there are no stars.

It's more evident up here, that feeling. It's more powerful, more pure. There's a longing there too deep not to notice and too deep to take hold of and set free to the wind. But there are no stars here.

It's different here, feelings change, surface and drift like leaves in a breeze. They'd go unnoticed if they could but up here, up here it's strange and there are no stars.

A Book made of Buttons

Hello, Other Blog. How are you feeling now that you exist? It's strange to think that, earlier on today, you hadn't even been thought of, let alone written in and planned. So quickly life is created, though, you're not strictly alive are you? No. You're only alive when I write in you. It must be a sad existence, even if it is new. It must already be sad, living only when someone else wants you to. But we mustn't dwell on sad things.

If you were a book, I'd imagine you to be completely covered in buttons, sewn onto your cover precisely and delicately. You'd be purple, of course, and though you wouldn't see it for the buttons, you'd be made of a nice material, something soft and smooth to the touch. Your pages would have that antique feel, smell. That crusty too-old but still living sense that old books have. You'd be a paradox in yourself, a new-old book and I'd write in you with a feather quill and purple ink. You'd seem like some sort of magic, to me anyway with my imagination tying itself in knots just to understand you. But I wouldn't. You're too complex. But you're loyal, I could see that from the moment you were made - if I were to write my secrets in you they would simply dissolve into nothing and reappear again if I wanted to see them.

It's nice, isn't it? Imagining what you could be like, if you were not caught in the web of the cyberspider, which we all bow down to daily. One day, I will make you, for real and I will write a new entry, just like this one just for you. No one else, it will be our little secret.

Hello, Other Blog. How are you feeling now that you exist?