best in show!

the longer i ignored him, the brighter i shined.

and i stumbled and fumbled up stairs in my unzipped boots.  i cheers-ed to people people i didn't know in empty glasses.  but i was comfortable and i was happy.  i was only acting as a favor to a friend.

the tables turned, and they were the one with secrets.  they were putting on a show.  diana ross said you shine bright and put a starred crown on my head.

under taker of the damned and undead.

mine is a hungry dagger, but i am in control.

at the end of a bloody day, a white horse takes me to a watering hole. somewhere to relax.

the rating systems are hard to process without seeming overly obvious.  the crowd wants to consume me. yet again...

i see where you all are coming from, but you dont know what from which i came.  I was taken advantage of. cursed.  they tried to drug me, but didn't know that it would only make me more wild.  I am living out my destiny.  know which parts were circumstance and those which were choice.

and theirs are hungry daggers. but i refuse to let them touch flesh.  there has been enough death.

you put death in me and i despise every inch of me that still loves you. not because i love, but because you are incapable of loving me and the reality of you in my skin, in each of my cells is like an itchy fucking bug clawing me to death from the inside out.  i wish i never met you.  you are a soul sucking hell.

childhood heros

They filled parts of the pool with concrete to lessen the water bill.  I sat at a table across from you.  You refused to play with the kids, you didn't want your hair.  You refused to humor me with more than a small handful of words at a time.  I congratulated your recent marriage and all you could conjure was a forced Thank you and a pair of dashing, darting eyes.  Once they narrowed on your escape you left.

I could feel hurt, and I do.
and I feel bad because I asked you to care, and that is the hardest thing to do.  But now, through similar experiences and reconciliation with the like, I have realized that empathy and compassion are great gifts.

And You are cold indifference.  The worst kind of evil.

EHBREHMAN

In a gallery warehouse I am naked.  I give myself to him.  He tells me he loves me.  I smile and say it back.  We are all eyes and-

Then people come in and it is business as usual.

I am setting up an sculptural instillation.  It is very important you do not enter the scene.  It is very important you stay on the other side of the signs I have yet to put in place.  Holograms come straight at you. Then dissipate like smoke before they hit your face.  But the piece isn't finished.  I tell them, then yell lights on.  Fluorescent lights flicker on one by one, starting from the end of a long hall.  Ufo holograms wiz by.   Haggard women smoking cigarettes. Dinosaurs.  Hysterical laughter.  Everything that has never existed or hurts to see.  The artist's name is EHBREHMAN, pronounced Brayman.  The piece isn't quite ready...it's still not done.

And some how the people have made it inside the installation.  They could not help themselves.  The piece isn't finished.  There are no signs.  You can't go back there I say.  You need to get out of there.  They won't leave.  I can call someone to make you leave.

I enter the instillation

And everything that was a hologram now is not.  A giant of a man with lumpy head grins broken teeth down over me.  A cave man.  Every monster that ever was but is not is now real.  Let the people go I say.  I have experience with monsters.  But all my energy and curses and blessings and attempts to divert foul play and dirty magic bounce from the giants belly onto the ground. The people are set free, they take me.  I yell for my love, but they already have him.

They bring me to an abandoned theatre.  My love is on stage and I run to him.  I sit next to him.  I bring my face to his to kiss and they rip him away telekinesis style to the other side of the stage.

I am hot with anger and the tight white plastic outfit they have me in begins to melt curled up black.  Everything I touch singes and shrinks away to glow then ash.  The vinyl beneath my bum burns hot sticky to my skin.  I shoot fire at the pigs and the freaks in the audience then immediately put it out.  To show what I could do but will not.  I could end them.  But I am just a flaming little freakshow and they are much more powerful.  A little teenage-stage magic tantrum.  But still--if they are the physical grotesque, I am the acrobat.  We are of the same people.

The freaks say please the Ultimate, do what would please him. I ask what this would be.  The animals say "be brave" though I know they intend for something more sinister (nod mocking to their own bravery head towards slaughter).  I pull white hair from my mouth and turn it to strings of pink flowers.  I raise the flowers to the ceiling and sprinkle the petals over their heads.  I touch their cheeks.  I grab their thighs.  I know they will take me and make my lover watch.

---

Some how I teleport myself out to russia.  I am safe until I try to transfer in my love.  He is not magic and he will not survive in their care.  But he is bait.  So I must move on to save the both of us.  I have not forsaken you.  I must move on to save the both of us.

---

I have made it away from the torture and have found a normal life in LA.  Leather jacket normal.  But whoever I love will be broken by the magic.  So, I leave to Iceland and walk in the snow to the nearest town.  I know now the people I stayed with in LA were also taken.  Strangers are prying with their questions.  Anyone may be involved in the magic that will take me back to that hell.  Everyone seems in disguise.

---

I have found others effected the same way I was.  We travel back in time to the moment I am lost forever.  I see me enter the gallery that night from a window in a neighboring building.  I say to myself-I have no idea what is headed for me.  I have no idea where I'm headed.

an old dream

in a train across the water I met two men who recognized me for my work.  The boat sank, we all survived.  They were out to get me.  To steal gold.  To buy out the last portion of evil.  He said meet me back here after 9pm.  On the toppest top of the building.  You'll know which one.  Take the elevator.

I did.  Purple dress, red lips.  Greeted by a man, he was my grandfather's closest friend.  He gave me some check, a bear printed on them.  The one from my childhood blanket.

He said you've felt alone, but we've been watching you.  The world isn't' safe for souls like yours. You'll have to fight.  But don't let them see you.

haunted parties/haunted scenes

when you brought me to your show, i made a mess of everything, despite how hard i tried to behave

and after I destroyed everything and a roll of film, and after everything i had done (his ghost to kill the pirate, the living sob under counter), you still sat beside me

but when i went to touch your face

my hand came back wet with blood

and you said, if you want to hear the truth....

but i can't handle the truth, so I wake myself up

I passed by T and he is hugging old friends goodbye.  I decide not to bother him. I am sitting in the airport and mom is upset.  I console her I tell her I can see.  Grandma always appears and I ask her questions.  I tell mom and she says that I am confused.  Worried. Says she doesn't believe me.  Thinks I am on drugs.  I walk around the airport.  I am here without a ticket, but i need to get home with mom.  Grandma appears again.  This time, I say, we have to show mom you are real.  I try to ask her a story only my mom would know, but she is fixated on a razor.  She's freaking out about the razor, breathing heavy.  It's not the right way she said.  It's not right.  I tell her it's just the way it's meant to be.  it's just the way it's always been.  and she gave the air that I should know better than that.  and I feared for her life.  she was already dead.  i feared for the state her soul's eternity would endure.

and since I didn't have a ticket I decided to walk. up this ramp,
T calls my name, though I already knew he was behind me
we walk together to the end of the hall by the bathrooms
we kiss and i have his back up against the wall.  he pulls me to him
We are still kissing and now my back is to the wall.

I stop because I have a feeling my mom is in the bathroom.  I try the handle and the door is unlocked, so I take a peak in.  She is there, bare assed on the pot.  I notice bruises on the insides of her arms as I close the door.
She comes out and t uses the bathroom while we wait.  I wait to confront her until we are walking away. The people around make me speak in code.  speaking to my mother makes me air on the side of caution.  deciding a non-judging tone would solicit the most honest answers.  Have you been doing charlie? I ask.  And she says yes.  and I say, well I can't leave with you then.  I'm sure you understand.
Even though I didn't have a ticket in the first place.  Breaking way felt like free.
She said she spent all my money anyway.  anything that was once mine is gone.  All of it.
I am crying in t's arms and he is consoling me.  but he too, is on heroin.  and now that i have nothing to give, I must give myself.  myself to him.  the fact i resist in proves I am a coward, he says.  i don't care what he says and I run run away

I am in a car leaving the airport, telling the story to the girl behind the wheel.  She is so involved she gets distracted and veers off into mud.  I will the wheels to keep moving so we don't get stuck.  Almost through.  But then we drop into a sinkhole.  and end up in a really cool ditch
which is not really a ditch and not all that cool because there are doors around us...one that leads to I dont know where and the other that leads to a home.
I am sticky I am itchy there are cobwebs in my hair.  and I am bit.  I am being bit everything itches and everything is swelling.  This is a spider.  on my gosh and it hurts.
I take a step back and see a line of webs goes diagonally across the ditch.  Effective security system I think, though it's hard to tell which side they are protecting, or just that they guard one world from the other. and what side did we end up on? which way weren't we supposed to go.
and these aren't normal spiders
the cop who gets me wont take me to the hospital, so i jump out of the moving squad car.  even though the hospital is a children's hospital, they see me right away.
these are not spider bites they say. just a dirt bug.  an ant
and i convince them otherwise

the woman sqweezing the pussy mound and out comes a spider.  very leggy. fast. really hard to kill.  wants to bite.  and it bites. and creates a mound which in lives a hibernating spider.  everyone bite by a spider makes another spider.    because they bite just as fast as they leave.  they are burrowing all over your skin.  and no matter how long or hard I work to squeeze them out and kill them in hopes to cure myself of the initial bite, I am biten.  it is part  of my identity.  the contagion of spiderbites.  They start to live inside my brain and eyes.

they took my money and the tags off my car.
he said the tags were expired anyway.  I was gone too long.
I fought back.  said i knew the tags were still good.  he was a theif
he held my throat and i screamed for help
told me I would let him take me in my car.  no you can't use his car
the police said it looked like i loved it
so he was no help
i threw a fit
and became worried they might think i was on drugs
for having feelings


james wrrites me a letter on a yellow post it thanking me for my time, saying this is the first time in his life he's been really doing the damn thing and that his bf has been a great addition to his life.  he told me to stay on medication and keep up with my insurance so I can keep up with myself. I LOVE YOU large and scratched at the bottom.  his boyfriend hand delivers a purse from thailand, notebook and a handful of inch tall yarn dolls (the Guatemalan kind you keep under your pillow).  He held up one of the dolls and said, "these are your children and their lives will fulfill your destiny."

impending doom

it is known by all that they will come to take me.  or hurt me.  it's just a matter of when.  I'm not sure what I will be fighting, so I don't know if I will defeat them.

i scan the home for intruders.  only one body.  that body is mine.  i tell the air to tell me when someone else arrives.  so i can prepare.  lights flash and people pour in from the basement.  my family my friends.  I know someone is on there way. or maybe they're already here.  this someone was sent to harm me.  i just dont know who it is.