How difficult it is for a woman or a man to expose themselves, where not even the very core of their being goes unscathed. Are we truly so sensitive to the light, or is it the one who carries it? Woe, woe unto those who shine the light in the dark places, for their reward is punishment. Whoever carries the light is decided to be evil, though the light make clear many things, both good and evil.

How difficult it is for a woman or a man to embrace the light when it comes, to let it shine and pour into the depths of their soul to wring out the bad and scorch the evil with its burning intentions. Is it not also hard for the good to be exposed? For what woman, what man can live with her or his good on a pedestal. Who among them will not build that pedestal of unholy pride, of unrighteous fear of rejection, of hatred of others? No, it is better for the good to be buried beneath the light, that no-one may see any but evil in those with pure hearts. Better to be thought evil than for evil to live in your heart.

How difficult it is for a woman or a man to learn to love the light, even when it is hidden, for when it is hidden we forget it is there and return to our evil ways. When we cannot see the way we must stay the course, for it has already been laid out for us. If we turn right or left to seek the light, will we not fall? Likewise, if we pursue the course without the light's direction, are we not doomed to failure? Life without the light is impossible, nor is direction prudent whilst blind.

Silent Raven

"Er, hello?"

"Yes, hello."

"I'd like to place an order."

The receiver makes a strange scratching noise, like a cat's claws pulling at the carpet. I want to pull away but the phone seems to be magnetically attached to my head. The shuffling on the other end stops and a clear male voice rings into my ear.

"Domai's Pizza, how may I help you?"

"Sal, is that you?"

"To whom am I speaking?"

"The raven quotes no more, though she tries in vain, her voice is heard no more, her cawing silenced."

More shuffling, this is beginning to get annoying. If I hadn't already been so nervous I might have started sweating, as it is my palms are already a sensitive taffy. It all seemed so ridiculous, in another situation I might have laughed. Or cried. Either way it would all be over soon. Brown and his wife are coming over for dinner later, maybe we'll be able to shoot some pool when we're done. Janice . . . she is such a nice woman.

"Domai's pizza, we are preparing your order. Under what name shall we put the reservation?"

"Thomas, my name is Thomas."

I give him my address and feel the back of my pocket for my wallet. I've done it so many times that the familiar bulge gives me some small comfort. I wipe my hands on my finely pleated pants, the sticky sweat pulling slightly at the fabric and leaving smudges on my clothes. A noisy clacking rises from my newly-shined shoes as I tap my foot on the noxious flooring, the grout rotting between the dirty tiles.

"Your order will be ready in fifteen minutes, please be ready to pay when our representative arrives."

"Thank you."

I hang up, my limbs wooden and cold. I stumble out of the bathroom and fall onto my bed, drinking in the familiar smells of stale air-conditioning, incense and dope. It's like I could just lie here forever, let the world move on without me. No, I must continue, I've committed already. Committed to this. I won't fall, I won't fail. Slowly, slowly as if dreaming, slowly as a man in a deep sleep I rise and move to the neatly folded pristinely-white shirt lying on the immaculately clean table. My reflexes are numbed, sluggish, and I do not even notice when I kick past a pile of dirty socks, one of which lands on a piece of pizza so old it has achieved sentience. My focus is on the buttons. There are so many of them. So many buttons.

I'm at my door, but I don't know how I got here. I never know, so I guess it really isn't important. I go to ring the doorbell, but remember the key in my pocket. Silly me. My hand is steady and I feel some part of me hope that the key won't fit. It slides in with a disconcerting click, the lock offering no resistance. Inside the house is just as it always has been, vast and forbidding. Really, I can't even remember what it cost for that ridiculous chandelier, but it must have been expensive. Are those inlays made of diamond? Still, I don't care about that. That's his life, and I don't know Him anymore.

He'll be dead soon anyway.

Oh, there's the doorbell!

The echoes of the bell are still bouncing around inside my head, harmonizing with those voices, those angelic voices. Deep down inside I know it's too late to go back. I am like a celestial body, a meteor doomed to burn up in the atmosphere; I cannot resist the gravitational pull of the door handle. There he is.

"Nice tuxedo."

"Mister Thomas?"

"Come on in."

An open palm waves him in, and I am helpless to stop it. He glances around furtively, and gives me a suspicious glance.

"Where is your . . . client?"

"Open your eyes, he's here."

Eyebrows narrowed, Tuxedo retrieves a small black object from his coat pocket and steps quietly through the long wooden hallway into the marble-floored kitchen. I can track his progress by the clacking of his very fine shoes. It takes him but a few moments to examine the first floor of my mansion. His mansion. Tuxedo returns, and he looks perplexed. I want to put his mind at ease, but my impatience is overwhelming.

"Can't you see Him you fool? He's right here!"

Inside I am writhing, gnawing at myself. He wants to leave, I can feel it. He wants to be set free. He can have my body but He will never have my mind! Quickly I rip open my shirt and bare my chest at Tuxedo. I know I am sweating now, even in the coolness of the central air. Tuxedo is gaping at me, staring at my naked upper body. His hands are trembling.

"Finish it!"

He starts to lift his pistol, the agony of the motion blatantly apparent. I would help him, but I am living in my own agony of existence now. He's figured it out. Maybe He knew all along. Maybe He just drew me along to show me how futile resistance really was. Either way, He would be dead soon, I had made sure of this.

Tuxedo is still lifting his pistol, it's at chest level now, and aimed directly at me. I close my eyes and wait for bliss to overtake me. There's a soft snapping noise, and I smell gunpowder. Has he shot? My eyes are open now, pleased with what they see. I am not so pleased. Tuxedo lies on the floor, blood pooling from his head. His eyes are open, the pupils entirely dilated. I want to cry, to scream in frustration, but He won't let me. He starts laughing, and I can hear the laughter. He can hear the laughter.

I have failed.

Spiral surface stripped of sensation,
Clean white exterior inside and out,
Life swirls about all creation,
A depressing ulterior route.

Ratty chunks of foolishness,
Carbon-sodium wrought to amalgam,
We fail all sorts of tests,
It's because of the rum.

Throw out all my change,
I can't even afford the token,
I'll try to be happy, if strange,
But my hedonic treadmill is broken.

Bias is inherent evil. I cannot escape it, though it does not clutch or claw at me, for it already has me fully in its grasp. Not with the infinity of time and the penultimate power of reasoning can bias be overcome, for you are born with it, and you will bear it as you have borne life's other burdens; you will bear it in submission. There is no choice.

There is a choice. You can live with your bias, feed it, and find one day that it has outgrown the carriage and demands a castle. You can moan and gripe about your fate until it swallows you whole. Or.

You may choose to fight it. Feed it only the barest of scraps, deny it the rights that any living thing deserves. Flog it daily until it vomits, for within this heartlessness lies your freedom. It will never die, it will still grow larger and larger until you find your perspective is not large enough to contain the mammoth within. But.

It will never die. It is important, no, imperative that you know this. Your bias will cling to you until the day you perish from this earth. All you can hope to do is delay its coming. Prevent the apocalypse until it is irreversibly upon you. Then you may embrace it in blissful hope, the hope that in the other world you will meet someone worth knowing.

Sans the bias.

Dissonant green curves amidst the black,
Sharp definitions pixels reach through,
Grasping at dust in the wind, on the track,
But fingers are no instrument to prevent flight.

When I desire to write I find myself assaulted by incoherent phrases, jumbled words and ideas that prevent me from being cohesive in the slightest. Often conciseness overwhelms me, and I attempt to truncate my ideas, rather than fabricate connections between them. What is the source of this dystopia of my mind? Is it a lack of artistic input? Perhaps the overwhelming presence of others prevents me from operating at my full capacity. The holidays are a terrible time, not because they bring joy, or because they bring love, but because they bring people.

People are not the bane of my existence, but there are times when I wish these vociferous strangers would remove themselves from my presence. Even the quiet dead can disturb the practices of the living.

You may interpret these statements as callous or hard-hearted, but the truth is there is a contrast to my rankling social opinions. The deep desire to love those who are close to me is overpowering, like fine incense in an enclosed space. I cannot hate people, for people and I have all the world in common. We live and die together; we are equals. I am no better than my brother, no matter the crimes he has committed, for we are one in this world.

There is a difference, strongly manifested but rarely discussed, between individuals and social groups. Individuals are tolerable, even if they come from the most unkind, unfair, and unpleasant stock. A social group is an abhorrence, even if a delightful group of people. A social group is, after all, comprised of individuals; but individuals subjected to group-thinking are the worst of all. Those individuals carry that group with them wherever they go, effectively sterilizing their intellect, discussion, and behavior. They are sheep, they are lemmings, they are evil incarnate.

Pain starts on the inside,
Gnawing away at concentration,
Still concentrated in my side,
Disturbing animations,
Like television sets play,
My mind is riddled with holes,
Riddle with the soft clay,
Even out my soul,
With drugs.

Rain is a masseuse,
Water pelting body and soul,
Great chiropractor.

The default scientific viewpoint is not skepticism, it is curiosity. Suspension of one's disbelief is imperative when mentally exploring the world of the unknown and the supernatural. When one deals in theories, it pays to be constantly questioning, but not skeptical. Never skeptical.

Skepticism breeds only dissatisfaction. A skeptic is never satisfied, even at the most basic level; for being skeptical is just another bias. Instead of pessimists, who believe that all the world is headed to ruin, or optimists, who believe that all things will yield good, a skeptic believes that all things are untrue until proven otherwise.

I cannot prove that skepticism is an irrational choice of world views, which is why the skeptic will never agree with my conclusion. I can connive and convince you to my cause, but it would not be proof. Because of this, no skeptic can ever truly be converted; else they were never a skeptic to begin with.

Why do I even separate skepticism and curiosity to begin with? Should not the two be amalgam, like flesh and water, fire and stone? Indeed, what is curious skepticism if not cynicism with a prenatal bias? Cynicism is the answer to skepticism, but it requires objectivity to reach; objectivity which the skeptics lack, for who can prove that objectivity is ultimate to someone who does not desire it?

Discover discover, the 10th of December,
Mystery and danger abound,
I find few faults,
In this day we have wrought,
For perfection is what we've begot.

- C for Cliche

Somebody scream,
I feel it in my knees,
There's trouble tonight,
They've caught the disease,

Apathy through,
Life on the farm,
All conglomerated,
Elusive charm,

Haiku is frail,
And prose is robust,
But words are like ash,
They turn to dust,

Ideas will remain,
Recycled, rewritten, rethought,
The same old antagonist,
With the same old plot,

There is nothing new under the sun.

My death is easily accountable for . . .

I have passed beyond the void, beyond the white light . . .

There is a parlor there of unknown origin, in which a pompous man in a white suit asks me my name . . .

But I never know what to tell him.

Infection has evolved with strangely ambivalent connotations. The very word infection is indicative of a powerful catalyst that has wrought change in something else, and yet still we subscribe to that foolish notion of the cliche. Certainly there is a place for hesitancy when it comes to the re-iterating of an old philosophy, but why is infectiousness so taboo? Perhaps we miss the point of an infection; infections aren't about hatred or antagonism, they are about change and survival.

Infections are contagious as well. The real danger lies in this ability to spread quickly, to maneuver from psyche to psyche spreading courage, fear, lies, hope, and malcontent. There is but one cure for this contagion. Were it possible I would have delayed this unveiling of my perception of infection so as to shield you all from my inevitable conclusion: the cure is an objective mindset. Influence is held over you by others undeserving of their power, but you can limit that influence until it has been marginalized by your own independence.

Now that we know we can control an infection with the antibody of our conscious mind, we can also take a step back and observe the true meaning of infective behaviors. Remember, the key to preventing your own infection is held in the mind, not in the actions that you take. Actions may always be misconstrued, twisted, and maligned, but internalizing your thoughts will not fail.

Do not be upset if someone says negatively that you dug your own grave while you were still healthy enough to do it yourself. After all, they will die grave-less.

Three days without word,
Haven't you heard?
The man has gone silent in awe,
For the fools have all died,
And his friends have found pride,
And the shock is bleeding and raw.

There they are, those blackhearted ghouls. They're still circling, high above me, while I drown. Just a bloated mass of fishy flesh, they squirm and wiggle their way through the now-turbid water, searching for me. I must be nothing, an insignificant speck in comparison, for they cannot see me. We are still conversing, a jaunty, but simultaneously deadly conversation. One verbal mis-step and Davey Jones will have to share his already-cramped apartment with yet another unwelcome visitor. I'm swimming towards the surface now, careful to aim my body so that I can slip past these massive fishes, these carnivores of the mind. I come dangerously close to one, so close that I can see those over-sized scales, those massive teeth, those big, blubbery, foolish lips. Still, he is distracted by my conversation, and I escape to the surface, madly scrambling onto the feeble land, hoping they will not see my exit. Others around me look down and say "my those are some big fish."

"You have no idea."

May my life create one winking flame,
To which my values and my morals be attached,
So that when I am nought but a name,
Some meaning to that name may be mismatched.

May my soul be quintessential truth,
Let no-one cloud my reason or my thought,
When reflecting on my history uncouth,
My philosophy will reflect what it ought.

May my rewards be all they're meant to be,
Let others see the gold rainbowing down,
And selfish desires no longer roam free,
While kingliness is knighted with a crown.

Too much to hope will henceforth be realized,
So I shall retire as my world is trivialized.

Expression through the written word is difficult today,
Why I can sing but cannot write my thoughts I cannot say,
Despite this all I will attempt some layman's easy prose,
Although it may feel awkward, like an unkempt, greasy rose.

First I feel strong hatred, burning lustfully inside,
My soul finds fault with competition, but it can't decide,
Do I stay within the circle, pompous as can be,
Of friends and foes, and trouble those, who turn and spit on me.

I've always loved a challenge, like our friendship (that's for sure),
But shouldn't friends tie up loose ends, instead of knotting more?
And should we not cease and desist, when granted easy truce,
Instead of gnawing in our bellies, twixt farce, facade, and ruse?

"But friend!" you cry, "Why fly when I am confident in soaring?"
"And other friends, who tie up ends, are quite often boring,"
So I sigh and kneel again, and feel the tongue-lash fall,
And wonder, through the pain, if I returned my mother's call.

Other things have come to mind, so I'll continue my digression,
On efficient social puppets 'midst political recession,
Of why a man is deified, enthroned by godly dress,
While crowds will follow his commands, morals all a-mess.

It rarely seems that I can dream of the logical thing to do,
And wake to find I'm far behind, for others think it too,
And I would rejoice, and raise my voice, if all the world would sing,
Of love and peace, of elbow grease, of avoiding lewd flings.

I find it hard to find a friend so open as to say,
That they don't mind that I can find a more efficient way,
If they gave to me all the room to be what I was meant to,
That friend would be the avatar of who I would relent to.

Unfortunately, as you can see, I've stopped being concise
So I'll conclude, just don't be rude, I don't write verses twice,
When you arise and don your clothes, ascending God's own stairway,
Be sure you don't neglect all those who chose to act the fair way.

This is a strange euphoria,
That would turn a man to butter,
That transforms a woman from an angel,
To something greater.

How is it then that I,
Feel this thing many a time,
Including with those who I despise,
I don't realize?

It was just a stab.

Right.

Just a knife between the ribs.

Just a series of serrated cutlery slowly drawn through my body, rending flesh from flesh in a torrent of blood and gory horror.

Just a stab.

Only a little knick in the heart, the bleeding can be staunched.

Just apply pressure.

Even the tiniest blood clot can be lethal, even the deadliest poison can be cured, and even the sweetest voice can destroy a man.

Oh that candy-coated, sugar-plum'd voice. I have gravitated to it, like a child to the tall glass jar of licorice, though he can only have one taste.

And I can't afford the dime.