Cassiopeia

I have a leak, my head has a leak, my mouth has let slip
so many words, tumbling out of me like water from stone,
like sand through my hand: over fingers, to fill the negatively-charged spaces between;

I have almost no words left. The precious few are recycled, over-used tarnished

garbage,
sea-spewn foam; mermaid-souls throttled and beaten over rock interminably.

Had I the words which fell,
fell out of me
to form pools of wet memories and warm lather for the birds which fly 'round my head
(my brow's feather-beaten, my eyesockets-- pecked clean,
diseased, laced with flies
and caked in rust
[encrusted Nightmare of Hot])----

Had I caught the words
(which poured, poured out of me)
in kitchen saucers, pans or papers
(oysters slickening silty syllables)----

I'd lay my claim to deeper waters,
or to servants indentured forever instead.
O Cassiopeia, beleaguered
for better by Poseidon's worst intentions----

How you hang, how you weep about as you call
your own-- O, Daughter-- back to you
from your captor's watery hovel:

The moon, she tries, but----
there you hang still.

(No ash black enough to antithesize;

from which these pinpoint-lights might rise.)

radiation brain-hum

schlepping, disgusting
indiscriminate self-
promotion.

cancerous, unerring
warmth of spirit;
dimness of intellect;
you have tantrums

and you seek my attention.
and i have nothing but my ignorance to give to you.
nothing to be said; rather, silence.

not a single bit of re-cognition
in my own head,
and on my face. you are

a species to be studied; you are not me;
i see nothing of myself beyond my first fifteen.
and yet, you appear all the happier.

you are protean and languid;
bombastic, maladjusted--
and yet, and yet:
you've no-
one to acquaint with.

And you--
you were sweet, too.
You; you were kind if naive;
a good-hearted soul
(even if you were clingy)
(even if you weren't brave)
(though I thought you ugly)
(I was always afraid)--

I am always afraid.
I'm never there;
I'm far away.

Sirens for your ears, siphons on your eyes

we're fighting danger in the air,
dangers of the heart;
warnings in the sky
of fire and falling stars.

sirens for your ears,
siphons on your eyes--
your lies have come undone, undone;
your words are undisguised.

21.02.012

wine that tastes like vinegar
at two in the morning;
because i am not where i'd hoped i'd be--
though i couldn't tell you where or what--
not for the life of me.

without words and thoughtfully-constructed
proses-- and poetries-- to study:
there is a lack of certainty.

in my writing.
in my speech.
the conviction's been evicted,
the mind and stomach lurch.

through all this
persists
the brain's whirr

whirr
whirr
whirr...

(the kiss of cold steel
forged by tiny foreign hands
does nothing to assuage the ache, the lacking.

and so,
i've no lover either.)

I have never at any point in my life
been greater than the sum of my habits.
Maybe someday; not tonight; I wait for life to find me.

I question the reaffirmation
of firmaments which have born
the hopes and prayers-- and the unwavering convictions--
of countless other specks,
those who've walked my path before me:

What does it matter?
What energy could sustain this?
Is space-time a fabric
stitched and sewn
for the Emperor's eyes alone?

The following was the last journal entry of one Jason S. Wiley-- purported to have gone mad before both he and his dog went missing. The journal entry was not dated, though officials have determined that the entry was written on or around January 17, 2004. Wiley was 27 years old.

* * *

Death waited outside his door.

He'd been feeling more distraught as of late. Simultaneous emotional paralysis and overwhelming discontent. Thinking that maybe They had done this to him.

He was home-- by himself except for the company of his old dog. She was fifteen, half-deaf, and going blind. The night before, she'd peed right in front of him, unashamed, right on the carpet.

Death was calling to her. Death waited outside her door.

He'd been preparing to make dinner-- something he rarely did for himself-- when the tiniest sound found his ear.

Was it the wind?

He got very still, and turned to face the black door.

It was night outside, and the vertical blinds covering the sliding glass door had been pushed aside-- earlier in the day, maybe, to let the sunlight in-- revealing a smooth, monolithic uterine lining of black.

The sound grew as the Door beckoned to him.

Would he see the pinprick light this time? Was the candle flame out there, burning, staring straight through him (as he slept, as he ate and walked)?; in every room of the house he saw the flame as it saw him.

Was it out th---

And then the sound changed form. The call of the wind became the call of a Dying Thing-- a rabbit murderously tortured, mewling in terror like a child.

He drew nearer the Door; fork from the sink grasped in hand; persisting.

Solid.

Solid;

His heart beat faster.

He stared into the gaping womb of awesome and unyielding blackness. Left Foot, trembling, proffered Big Toe. Big Toe slid the wooden stake into the sliding door frame, without Eyes belying a thing to the Thing that bored its own intent and malefice into him.

He jerked the vertical blinds shut, his gaze unwavering (Oh God oh God did it know could it feel him did it know he was lying----), and threw the frozen fish back into the freezer. In a blanched silence he glided, slid across the floor to stand over the old dog. She was panting.

Bless her heart, he thought. She hasn't heard a thing.

The tortured cry outside had ceased. The silence had moved in.  Blackness rippled and writhed at the edge of his vision.

He bent down, stroked her soft fur-- cherishing what were to be his last few moments with the old dog. From his position he watched a car pull up outside. Its driver clearly wasn't from the area; he parked oddly and stepped out of the car, leaving the car still running and the headlights blazing.

The tall man just stood there, staring at the house.

After an indeterminate amount of time, he noticed the man had gone-- how long, or when exactly the man had gone, he wasn't sure. The car's headlights-- which he realized he had been staring into, transfixed (--how long? HOW LONG?!)-- were extinguished.

But for how long they had been extinguished, he couldn't say.

The man had come (They knew) and gone.

* * *

Police have ruled out the possibility of suicide, as no bodies were found at the scene. The only notable pieces of evidence consisted of a puddle of urine in Wiley's front entryway and a hardened pool of candle wax in the back yard. More than a month after Wiley's disappearance, and with no substantial leads or evidence, officials have called off their search.