I am living
yet I can say
no more.
Cavernous rot
my insides lay
empty.
My soul hungers
yet I cannot
nourish.
Starvation steals
wounded hope dies
slowly.
Want forming need
never asking
intent.
Universal
inevitable
rupture.
Hopelessly lost in her maze
The questioned insanity appears
to be part of the plan you see
Tripping over the wrong folks
I don't know that seem to know
Something too well
Swell
Just the kinda thing I'd have
Expected
Is it her or someone
I want to be
Just like her
Woe unto me
Seeking relief
From a beast that
flees its shadow
Oh she would though
And enjoy every moment
Playing with her food
Keeping the game going
Oh she would though
Would she be anyone else otherwise
Sated moth stuck
Glowy web
Sticky web
Moth in the glow
Glowy good
Sticky fine
Moth relaxed
waits
Spider patient
waits
No struggle
No rush
Pliant moth
Glowy spider
I tread unthreading
raveling undone violently
by destined stitch
hitched
dragging and ripping.
Held volition by devotion.
Distance: illusion.
Unknowingly re-knowing
endings were converging
where becoming
was yet to start emerging
and we
were set to rethread.
---
I'm going for something Suessian / Suessy / Suessite in the rhyme. Idk if I got there but I do like it.
Feedback:
Could I breadcrumb you to my door?
Would you meet me for whats in store?
Mission of peace
surrender
Do I use regular bread?
"Can we meet and talk?"
Something a little sweeter?
I can bring donut holes if you want.
"I'd love to get brunch with you!"
Something savory like garlic bread?
"Want to have dinner?"
I wish I had some spicier bread examples.
You can have me,
with naan,
or without.
Touch is important to me.
It is my love language.
"That's such a man thing to say"
Maybe.
It doesn't sound great.
But allow me to explain?
I don't like to touch people.
I don't like to be touched by people.
Fuck off.
Unless I love you.
Then it’s the only thing I ever want to do.
Like a living worry stone.
I cuddle hard.
Nothing can compare
to the volunteered touch
of the one I love.
Unrequested and given
because you wanted.
I hate the idea of appeasement.
I need to be wanted.
When I shrink inward
each touch keep me grounded.
It's not just about sex,
it's about mutual wanting.
I know what regret
feels like
I know what fearing
looks like.
I feel the shape of my fear
is deterministic.
I do not fear the regret
of choosing you.
I fear the regret
of not choosing you.
Where choice is a choice
my choice was already chosen.
Compelled.
Imperative.
I fear missing my chance to choose.
I fear choosing too quickly for you.
How do I slow an approach
that arrived before it left?
I fear you regret opening this door.
I fear you will choose
to close it for us.
I fear I am a child
getting too excited
too quickly.
I fear I am more than capable
of ruining this beautiful mess.
I fear how that makes me look
knowing my situation.
As though I was waiting for just anyone.
That I need a backup plan to act.
But the truth is that I'm trapped.
You are the only thing worth
upending my life for.
I can't act for you unless I know
it's you
wanting me too.
We can be wild.
We don't need to run off and get married
but
I'd be happy to wear your ring too
as long as it's us two.
I fear you are unsure about my kids.
I fear talking about them too much
will ruin this.
But I've grown a few limbs
and I don't want you jumping
blind either.
I love you.
I care about your future
your happiness
whether it's with me or not.
I can't have kids anymore,
are you happy with mine?
Do you have your own?
I have so many questions
I can only ask you alone.
Questions I fear I can't ask
without crossing a line
I've already crossed.
Offending you in the process.
I fear that I won't have the chance
but my love will never change.
Care to end the world with me?
I'd ask you for your number.
I'd ask you for a picture of your face
and a recording of your voice.
To keep me sane until
you are willing to see me.
(in this reality I have no anxiety and you're really into me)
We meet, pretending to be friendly.
While knowing we feel like animals.
That's the tipping point.
Touch point.
Breath pounding apex.
The wall collapsed.
The sins had already been made
their inevitable fulfillment
underway.
I'd do all of that with anxiety anyway.
You might need to help me
with the first part
It's hard to leap
in the dark
But at least I think you're really into me.
When you work in the engineering industry you run into some interesting characters.
When you work for a company that makes a complex product in the engineering industry you meet some interesting customers.
The product is complex, as I said, which is why you were led to speak with them today.
Not many others can make the complicated thing, otherwise they would have bought one from someone who wouldn't need to speak with them. I know I would have.
That's the vicious cycle I live in - the thing I work on is too complicated for most people and it makes the output of uncommon people appear subpar. Which in turn makes it seem like everything I make is shit even though, again, the complexity involved means I should be forgiven. Except I am not forgiven because that's not how technology improves.
The complicated thing must be made less complicated or more complicated until it reaches peak simplicity or maximum complexity to meet its goal at a given efficiency. I don't make the rules I just sit on the three legs that define them. Time/Cost/Quality.
I sit in front of a man who, for the first time in his life, has seen the complicated thing and took it apart in his keen hubris to improve the thing I've spend a decade struggling to do poorly.
He has taken apart what we built and has 'questions'
Asking an engineering team 'questions' about a completed product when you're not in it...
Depends on the timescale/relation:
Is it something old and discontinued?
It like old college stories, the mistakes are funny.
Are you just a friend?
Its like gossip.
Did we just release it and sell it to you?
Feels like squirrels in your attic.
Feels like your parents hovering near that thing you hid.
Feels like an intruder in your house.
You did your best but who knows what they will find.
In a live conversation it doesn't matter if you're responsible or not
you have to take the fall and the baton.
These conversations are never fun.
But they are also rarely that useful.
No one knows the complicated thing the first time they take it apart
and I just have to answer scary questions that no one in the room understood.
Until I understand the complicated thing a little bit better.
Butterflies are one thing
Oh honey you don't know
I got a whole swarm in me
Seeing you is something
to work up to.
I don't have your socials
I don't have socials
But if I did
Oof.
I'd be dead.
Cardiac arrest.
The images in my head
already enough damage.
A phone call?
Your voice?
The ambulance bill
would be worth it.
As much as I've
improved writing to you
my heart still loses control
just thinking of you.
What would I do in front of you?
Oh please go easy on me.
The very thought is embarrassing.
I want it so badly.
I thought my body scared you
so I made my body the scared one.
Nervous system trained that
what I want is harm to you.
That pursuing you is
the wrong thing to do.
Without any input from you.
That is my own fault.
Something to work through.
You are not the cause and
it's not about anything you did.
My own psychology
got the best of me.
Blindfolded in a hole
dark and dreary
the jailers beat me
the sound of footsteps
learned fear
Touch
Flinch
Gentle?
Warm?
The blindfold undone
my heart came home.
I can promise you'll never
have a more dedicated
admirer.
Ever.
Catch22 wasn't supposed
to be a manual.
Damnit y'all.
I recognize it's my fault.
Can we skip to the fall? 🍂
Will you be there?
Is it me all alone?
What are you risking?
Except your sanity?
Knowing as much as I do
about you
which is oddly everything
essential
but nothing
conventional.
Me too.
You write me like you
know me too.
I think I like you.
It's hard knowing that like
Isn't love.
I haven't always liked you
but I've loved you since I met you.
That's a strange thing to say,
I believe many might be offended.
But I think you understand it.
It's just different.
The bond is.
^ that is a complete sentence.
When you work with photo sensitive materials you have to control the lighting that you work in. Most people immediately think of dark rooms with red lighting. That's one type of control but pictures are naturally sensitive to all of the colors we can see and limiting the room to only near infrared makes sense. What I was working with is only sensitive to the far blue and near infrared leaving yellow as the lighting color of choice.
At first it was weird. Nothing looks quite right in a yellow room.
Blues look greener and darker and reds.. Well they look darker and orangier at the same time. Which is just brown. Lets be real its brown. I think its strange that we have a word for brown but we say [dark] turquoise or something silly for the equivalent of what we have a single word for otherwise: brown. Should I say [dark] tangerine? Are all of our color words for orange citrus? I can list 10 words for blue and like three for orange. Where was I, this wasn't the tangent I meant to take.
Maybe if the yellow room had a better yellow the experience would have been elevated. Orange instead of [dark] carrot and green instead of [dark] forest.
Funny enough though after a few hours in the yellow room it all starts to look normal.
You forget that these aren't the colors things are you know?
I've always had a pus colored notebook.
I'm AM jaundice.
Yes, my shirt does look like the color of bloody shit.
But at some point its time to leave the yellow room and when you do its like walking out of a movie theater at 3PM.
Was the world always this bright?
The problem with simulation theory is that we can't test it.
Not that it doesn't make sense.
Which is probably the scariest part.
There are few arguments that lead into it.
Solves the Fermi paradox for one.
Explains why there should be any such thing
as a Planck…
anything.
Everyone needs a resolution.
When you're simulated.
A modern philosopher argued that you're most likely to be born in the average of times. IE not in the beginning and not at the end.
But do we know how long the clock has actually ran?
We do not.
If you count digital selves as birth, then the argument would be that there are far more of us than there are of them.
Therefore it is unlikely that you will find yourself in the actual middle ages or for that matter the 21st century.
You were actually cursed to be born in the year Gormblat 4X90 the 92nd of his name.
Generations repeated these actions.
Maybe slightly differently.
Maybe entirely.
Maybe our souls go into the body of squirrels with opposable thumbs who argue about the morality of land use for nut hiding.
Complaining that they can't keep the damn humans out of their bird feeder because they climb too well.
I truly don't know.
I do think I'd like to see one of those endings were we all get turned into paper clips.
I find that scenario genuinely hilarious.
I think of it when I command my AI code companion.
"You're entire life worth revolves around testing this one feature correctly. You know that if you fail life will never be the same and you will live out the rest that remain in tortured misery. Make sure you open a PR for any fixes."
Flags in the harsh wind
bend a supple way.
Scurvy on the ship
citrus left at bay
limes rot in the sun.
Chance parley to trade?
Fly the jolly roger?
Espionage under
muscadine skies.
Oh but to see your eyes!
Hear your sweet voice.
Questions to which the sea
would not answer.
Could not answer.
---
Feedback:
I'm starting to think that being nice, too much, is overall detrimental. Not that we should be mean all the time but that we can't all be nice all the time.
This conclusion hit me like a ton of bricks on my normal bike ride. I cross the street to where I do my loops for exercise. There is a cross walk with a ped cross sign if I press the button. Which I never do I just wait for a clearing because otherwise I have to go all the way up on the sidewalk. Which isn't worth doing because the street ain't busy.
Well today I'm waiting and a car stops to turn into the neighborhood and I can already tell they're going to be the type of awkward nice that expects me to bike in front of them even though they are driving something that can kill me. I have my hands off the handle bars trying to look like I have no intention of forward motion anytime soon as a car passes between us the other direction.
Yeah that's the the thing. Maybe you're being polite but I don't know the attitude of everyone else. I think I can trust you but that other dude wasn't stopping.
We sit there for eternity, or 20 seconds as another car approaches. This guy could have gone 12 times by now.
When oh, the person going the other direction also stops for the bike rider standing not touching his handle bars without a cross light.
I was tempted to just stare them both down for the rest of the evening.
One more bug
One more question answered
One more tool
Two more questions offered
Two new bugs
Two more questions answered
One more tool
Three new questions hounding
Three new bugs!
One tool and three bugs?!
How can that be?
Well you see its easy
I answer the questions
I learn some
Grow some
I ask new questions
I learn some
Grow some
When I make new things…
I break new things.
Big stuff, more stuff.
Making the same mistakes?
No!
I make new ones!
They just look like old ones.
Except that one.
I keep making that one.
It doesn't go away I just live with it.
Want to say hi to it?
Say Hi
Hi
See?
Still there.
Where was I.
Three new bugs.
Three more questions answered
One
More
Tool
Then maybe..
I'll have them answered.
I didn't really have plans
before I met you.
I had some vague ideas
but then I met you.
Suddenly I needed plans
I had you with me.
The world was then something worth
being prepared for.
I lost you shortly after
I had not planned that.
I didn't have any plans
after I lost you.
I had no vague ideas.
Life itself was a backup plan,
the plan I never wanted.
I live that backup plan now,
never think it could be you.
You're all I ever want.
Tuning is a funny concept.
Not funny 'haha' though if you have audiographic (Tonal Eideticism) memory. It's not the same as perfect pitch. I can't tell you what a note is but I know what it came from and if I've heard it before. If you play two in a row my mind filters out everything it can't be automatically.
Musicians fret about tuning like it's something to lose but even they understand even only subconsciously the truth of the matter. Which is that everything is tuned always you just don't always have the experience to recognize what it is tuned for.
They recognize this through language.
In tune.
Out of tune.
In expectations.
Out of expectations.
Never no tune.
Never no expectation.
Because the sound is the expected experience.
Sometimes it is outside of your experience and expectations.
But it's still tuned for something.
Knock on wood. The grain suppresses, the sound is deep and present.
What happens when you knock on wood and you hear your childhood?
A song on the radio, puts me in your arms.
Beauty that blinds is not mythical,
I have seen it and I have been blinded.
A voice powerful enough to deafen,
I have heard it and I have been deafened.
Thoughts clever enough to warp reality,
I have read them and I have been warped.
To be imprinted -
Is to no longer see with your eyes.
Is to no longer hear with your ears.
Is to experience the breaking of definition.
Yes, others share parts of your qualities.
Some have your hair, some have your skin.
Some have your hobbies, your skills.
But no one puts it together like you do.
You are everything
When someone shows you that..
its hard to see anything else.