Half life

We are all quietly sitting in an auditorium.  We are waiting for the presentation—for the balding man to come and turn on the projector and show us transparencies.  He will write on them in marker, circle the important bits, underline words, draw arrows.  We will all sit quietly but make no notes, because notes are not allowed.  We will just hear it again and again until his lecture is all we know.  And it is always the same lecture.  The same lecture again and again, with the same arrows and underlined words.  I have heard it so many times the words mean nothing to me.  It is almost as if they are in a foreign language.  They just roll past me like tumbleweed on the road.  I will stare straight ahead and hear nothing and turn written words into straws that represent intersecting hallways, each one leading somewhere I am not allowed to go.  If you stare at words hard enough you don’t see them.  You can read words out loud and not hear them.  I can read the same pages again and again and again and not recognize them if someone read them to me.  I am a master.  I am a genius.

A Window to the World

A Window to the World, the new serialized novel coming to https://channillo.com/ in November!  Stay tuned for more details...

Fading

So I walked past

the knives

only to be stabbed

a thousand more

times

Camouflaged

The tiniest of smiles crossed his face, which said it all.  He had won. 

“I’ll get her back,” I told him, my fingers forming into tight fists.  “No, you won’t,” he answered, and strolled down the hallway--pausing only to smile at me again before turning into her room.

Lost

Sometimes I am lost,

wandering around my

mind.

And the madness that

touches me,

touches you,

too.

It beats me inside,

it makes me swallow

what I should

release—

but it beats me inside,

I have to swallow

or I will

choke.

It follows me,

but it can run so

much faster.

It can run so much

faster...

The Bald Man Speaks

You think you know.  You can never know.  You will never know anything other than a name that means nothing to you.  You are trapped in the network.  The hallway has no exit.  The bicycle has no wheels.  If you step outside of the red lines there is nothing to stand on.  You will fall.  You will fall, and you will not even remember how to scream, but it won’t matter.  Because no one would hear you if you did.  You are a story I sold for a million howls of laughter.  For a million screams of pleasure.  You are nothing.  You were just one more born to serve a purpose, and now you are used up.  No wonder you question living.  You know there is no purpose left for you.  I tore you into tiny pieces and gave bits to any who asked.  I did this because you are useless.  No one cared then, and no one cares now.  You are a piece of lint to be flicked away, blown into nowhere.

Encroachment

I bumped into the memory man

the other day—

(we’ve been crossing paths often

lately)—

I listened to small things

which gave me small reactions.

But when he arched his eyebrows

as if asking was I ready?

I decided I wasn’t in about

one second

and I left memory man

where I found him and

conveniently forgot where

that place happened to be.

The only thing is that

he knows how to find me

he finds me every day

and every day he asks the question

and every day I say, “No thanks.”

One of these days, I guess.

It will be one of these days.