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