Berry

Restores 10 hp for your pokemon, yo.

Because where I grew up I was surrounded by blackberries Every week last month I rode by and into their lovely sharped arms Ate them raw and sour Fed them to the girl at my knees, smarter than me Knows to duck when she sees that berry-stained punch comin' round Hit the ground Runnin' for fear and for fun 'Cuz I don't need your fingers smudgin' stains in these ones

Everything I've learned about roots, sweetness, and cruelty

Is founded on

Is learned from

This small, dark-eyed creature.

A thousand spiders and
Not a single lie between them
But not a single breathes a word
About the silk
Strung up between them

Because I am an embarrassingly simple creature

Because I do not understand beauty and ideals

In skies

In flight

I understand only bellies

Hunger

and comfort

I am a dog pushing cassava up from the ground

At best

A dog investigating trivialities

At worst

And most often

We try to say

That this is ok

But we do not always believe this

"Why?"

"Because it's not right."

'Right' here not necessarily meaning moral, though maybe that interpretation would shed some light on some things, too.

Because I am the kind of thing that knows only the road and the necessity of a good place to rest when one becomes tired of the road.

Because I have no conception of perfection

Because, even worse, I am in love with flaws

Yours, mostly

Because I cannot learn what I most need to

Because those few things I do learn I learn from the bellies of colossi

And so my understandings are upside down and inverted

Reflections in water

Functional until asked to

"Stand up straight, lad, lemme see your eyes."

Headache

Dizzy

Don't ask me to stand

If you do not dig you do not eat

If you do not seek places you will have nowhere to spend the night

Sleepless nights are tolerable

But cold ones out on the road are damn near unbearable

That's why I'm hoping

This is all forgivable

I want to be a place
For those who have forgotten to dig or find a place to sleep
Even restless sleepers
That shake and cut the earth with
Their teeth when they smile
So mostly you

I'll be this place

"Now ain't that some shit?"

Cee-Lo

"Do you wanna save the world, Jerr?"
"No. No not really."

Cardamom

"Strange."

I don't know what this is, can't identify it, in the same way I can't press my fingers into my skin and know: "liver." I know it's in there somewhere, and I've seen them before, but I've no conception, really, of where it is on me and the likes. But I've been called this twice in the last three weeks, so..so it must be sticking out or something. I don't know how to work around what I cannot see. I stretch and wind my fingers blindly at my hips all day--where is it? Where is it? I could have sworn--Huh. That's odd.

"Change."

This has never worked before, so I don't know how..
But maybe that's why: I don't know how
There's something to be said for the obscuring of mechanics
Othertimes, not

It's hard to stay on any colossus, but as soon as you get to that back or shoulder fur, you're golden, man.

It just...keeps shifting. And it's hard to keep track of things when they shift. And it's just pure luck that it's all shifting in the same general direction. If you're really lucky, a freak shake from a colossus will throw you off and up to the vital on its head. Yeah. Golden.

"What's it like, man?"
"Great. But there's a space of time when pants get weird."

"What?"

"They just don't wanna stay on, ya know? It's weird. And that's what it's like."

"You...you're strange."

"Yeah, well...that's change, kid. Buck up and get a belt."

It's amazing how many eyes and mouths there are out there. I feel like I've seen so many lately. But this isn't about mouths; it is more mechanical than that, it preempts the mouth; this is about legs.
Something strange
LionZeusYahweh--this is just me trying to remember how close-

I've been told I have changed.

But all attempts at confirmation have failed; I remain the same in every watery face I ask. The camera is swinging wildly; dizzying. I only hope I am where I think I am on the colossus.

At 7am this morning I was swinging at the park and listening to The Kalendar Prince and smiling and other things odd and difficult to explain.

See now, you would understand, is the thing.
Strange.

Today

I pretend I am Faye.

Three. Two. One let's jam.

I don't know how to run without getting shin splints.

I don't know how to talk without tratterling.

But God, it's still worth it.

The way she keep lickin' those lips, them burns'll heal quick

She wears her shirt around her hips as she hums and laughs and cooks

The shades are up and the windows are open

Anyone could see--but no one will. But anyone could; and this is called thrill.

The bread she bakes today will taste twice as sweet tomorrow

Once for the brown sugar mixed in the milk

Once for the secret of flour on skin
Rolled oats on silk

Does it taste sense?

Old Salt Horn

I wonder if you have grey hairs, boy? It is so improper of me to call you a boy that it makes me smile, wide and pleased, like I used to when I fell asleep under the sun with bees bumping along the inside of the window. Even then, I never called you boy. When I wrote, I pulled from you a child, an adolescent, and the closest--a paper man. These things were all you; but you were none.

I wonder if you still cut your head off every season like a sheep? I remember how it moved--like a very careful ornament, each part and joint moving independent of the skull when you shook.

I wonder if you still fidget? This strikes me as a youthful thing. Are you still youthful? How far have your smile lines stretched?

You moved as if your bones had been replaced by bamboo shoots.

Have you bitten anyone yet? I'd always wondered if you had. There were signs...no, just the one. And it looked like whatever it was bit back. Paper beats rock, kid, but scissors chip rock. How much smaller you get at this distance. But it's all perspective. If that distance were halved and then halved again, I'd jolt, as I once did, at the sight of your stature. You are a shaggy colossus with spirits for eyes.

Do you still allow yourself to be distractions when you walk? I hope so. I hope so. I still think about this. It makes me wonder and twist and wonder some more. Surely not..? I will never know the answer; the question is unaskable. And so between us is this secret: the unanswered, unasked answer. Yours may be different from the one I have sketched out, and yet...the secret we share is the same. Not shared, really--neither of us owns it; it owns us.

The shape of your back is the first I've remembered. Reminded me of an animal that is either loping or stretching--a strange, strange bird with a snout. An alien, maybe. I've known some aliens in my time.

I wonder if you lean as far back when you walk as you used to--as if something between you and your shadow was lifting your lazy bones along.

And, of course, I wonder what you'd think of what I've made today; I wonder how earnestly that urging was. Well wishing or...or did you really believe I could, should, and would shake shit up? I don't know if I believe this. But sometimes I do. And some of those times, just for your sake. And I do not think that is necessarily a bad thing.

Ecstasy

"And [the] ecstasy is obscene." -p.22

"The word is free, but I am not; the space is so saturated, the pressure of all which wants to be heard so strong that I am no longer capable of knowing what I want. I plunge into the negative ecstasy of radio." -p 25

But I know what I want. Barely, sometimes. And this isn't it. And that realization is..it's somethin', man. I can't tell you what it is I can only tell you what it feels like-

Sometimes it is so loud that I do not make noise, even when I should, even when there is vital and worthwhile communication to be made, because I cannot bear to raise the volume. Hurts my ears and gets me nowhere.

"[It is] an over proximity of all things, a foul promiscuity of all things that beleaguer and penetrate him, meeting with no resistance, and no halo, no aura, not even the aura of his own body to protect him." -p 27

I want my body. I want it to break. I want it to suffer. I want it to change--not once, but many times over. I want to be a monster. Fuckin' Omnimon or something.

I am reading too many words from the hand of a dead French man

I don't believe anyone who tries to discern between what is real and unreal; who hungers for what is 'real.' Nor do I believe in those who try, meticulously, consciously, to drag one into the other, because there is separation still in this process. I believe in hunger. This is neither strictly real or unreal. I believe in the bones before the flesh and the flesh as much as the glove.

Do you see?
Is that all?

How do you kill what is already dead?
The ceremony is never over

A creature of mud,

Wet and dried and painted on

A creature of ritual

This is my destiny

There must be play

I must move dangerously and pay prices
Owe debts
Give parts and pieces
Be divided and traded and swapped like patterned snake parts
I will be Changer Fissure Fracture
There are ten million lines to be crossed and uncrossed for no more reason than I like watching the squeeze of your leg muscles
It makes me think you are about to jump
And other things

I will not be a limitless stretch of skin

I've stuffed this whole concept into the frame of a game and in that frame it reads: "it isn't star power." I could say more on this, because I've started to figure more of it out. But I won't. Because I've no reason to yet.

Don't roll in the ecstasy of what is real
Come with your pockets lined with lies
No, not lies, let's be careful here--with fictions
If you write, I will read
It is so goddamn hard for me to read these days
But if you write, I will read
Write on anything
Write through everything
Just don't write shit.

The biggest lies I've told are the ones I gave when asked to speak honestly; not lies--misspeakings. The most painful truths I've told are buried, and not always that deep, in my fictions; there I will fight with you. I do not want slack jawed fascination; I have no need of it. There are others scraping the back of my brain with their art. Got places to go and shit to do!

But it is frustrating to watch a tiger stay in cities of mice because it is so determined to convince them that they are mice, and it a tiger. Borges has made me fond of jungle cats; I do not like watching them dig at the dirt when they could be digging at meat.

I wish I could feed you better than I am fed

I can roll my own skins; don't need no ten screen'd machine to do it for me
I have legs

I am afraid of neither distance nor hour
I have time
I have

They Are Not Really So Hard to Find, the Colossi.