reypulque

the mad doctor

This has gone on for years, the outbursts and the incarcerations. Every year some fresh reiteration of some great wheel with-in a wheel, some cosmic truth or ghastly redress. His mind grinds down its gears, all the noise and smoke some new enlightenment, some message from heaven. His mind wrecks, rerunning the same races, changing the names and vectors, changing devils and...
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the slip

You wake up in a room that you never remember on the first try, the television spinning some tired story, the sun having slipped away while you slept. There is a fuzz between your thoughts and their thinking, a static between sensation and all the stored away names. You stand up slow, experience at long last kicking in. It was day and now...
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of a summer rain

The rain gathers in the gutters. The rain showers from the eaves. Slugs and snails take to the sidewalks, easing their way towards their next meal. The day begins and ends cool and gray. The pavement making mirrors, the sky painted slate. This is where the night unwinds. This is how all the lights go down.

I stare into the ceiling,...
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wed

She closes her eyes, but it doesn't help. There is no shutting the inside out. Like the stone that hides inside of stone or the water hidden with-in so much water, she slides inside the swarms of teeth and needles, sealing the deal. All the dreams of care-free flesh, all the days of work and plunder, drowning inside the whole of her indifference, smothering...
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moody

The air is still thick as the sun goes down. Whatever heat is left still lingers, clinging to the shadows, trickling down my skin. The idle rumor of a porch-light on, moths and spiders gathered on the screen. Summer is green, glistening wings arising from stagnant water. Summer is blue, tall draughts of silty voices, ink blotting out the stars.

The ache returns like...
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faster

There are rivers of blood that abut this house. Streams of livid flesh and intent that arrived upon my shores many years ago. Tangled teachings and lessons learned and story after story gleaned from the cusps where one tongue becomes the next. Trees and tales and slender branches bowed with the best fruit. Stones rolled away and the dead again alive and all the...
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two-step

Sweat beads upon my forehead, sweat glistens on my arms. Sweat soaks through the thin green cotton t-shirt, damp fabric sticking to my chest and shoulders. The sun beats down all my doors, it burns away every shadow though the day is soft and mild. I can feel the heat burning away, all this energy trapped in my pallid, splotchy flesh. Only a handful...
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whispers

There is a seance high amid the green of leaves, the self another sudden conspiracy, the sea somehow breathing deep blue sky. Words woven from the brush work of branches and the ceaseless wind. Voices caught aloft and lost among birds and clouds. This ocean so anxious and so lost above.

Heaven is cast into the depths, a ventriloquy of brittle pieces crushed and...
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caught

The stars flicker and vanish, reborn again with each sway of leaf and limb. The light is left behind in bleary eye and fitful memory, those maps of constellations. Those skies littered with satellites and tiny wings. Swarms of mosquitos buffet and drift, following each whispered hint of blood. They descend trails of breath and sweat in silent hunger, glints of instance, sparks of...
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in the dark

The air unfolds slowly, the weight and temperature of fevered flesh. The feel of skin on skin as I walk through the atmosphere, moving from room to room. The moon slips in through the screen, another stranger staring through shadows. My breath is a tide of ragged whispers and broken hinges. Too much is never enough.

I close my eyes and listen...
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the written

The corner of the page was folded back, marking your place or saving some phrase, the book just gathering dust on a crowded shelf. Another note in the margins, another letter saved for contrast, love lost measuring some fracturing of intimacies, some distance only measurable in words. The faith we declaim always there in that breathless hand until it is broken. There is...
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use

Rain or not, the clouds roll by. The streets are ringed with grit and gravel. Every word out my mouth seems either swear or oath. Every bite I take is seasoned with sand. Nothing I do is reasoned right. Nothing I do will redeem me.

It is in the flickering of distant stars through the swaying limbs of trees. It is in the sparkle...
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