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.