he breathed an old magic, and the words tumbled from his lips like coins from a hand. i didn't catch the incantation. but the fire has lept around me, i lost my right arm. the old sage laughed through paper thin lips pulled tight like leather. and just about the same color.

i called out for his help. felt him there but only for a second and my own incantation ripped and tore at the roiling ground. it spilled forth with the thousands of dead that served my master in his lifetime. and now served me. even my severed arm joind the frey clawing at the sage and his holy minions, righteous truth burners and puritanical angels. this went be on good and evil, young and old. the sage ahad a true hate for me. a hate that burned so bright it blinded his vision. and now he spat only venom. if only he knew where i came from. that we were the same. that he was indeed me and i him.

but our image was different. and i am sure that fighting the past and future war in the present would unwind time and kill us both. but it wouldn't let us go. not this time.

self destructive and sadly touched
wasted away like so many of you did
god loved you but for a minute
when you left your faith with the unborn angels
and self dying
its a wonder the angels lived with you at all
but we are the children of the night
self destructive and sadly touched

the nights are shorter now when the daylight ends the surfaces radiate heat. in some cases light. infact its really never dark here, and when you least expect it you'll go blind. that the purple hung so low to the ground, and that the germs went away. but as one season comes and others go it remains cold. like your heart. i know. its my heart too.

i ve fallen from grace. fell like a rock and burned up in the atmosphere, and some one out there in the cold desert saw me all green and firey. so we spend our nights in cars and on roads, holding and gazing and kissing and feeling. not because we want to but i fear its becuase we have to, and maybe we need to. the trees are closer and the sun is warmer now. sometimes the wind blows and i feel that old feeling. the one that sends shivers up my spine even when photocopies of beaches and sand warm the souls of everyone and melt the snow of the last one you couldn't sleep away. so this is for all the pretty people. this is for you.

it makes me feel worse 
before i can ever feel better
and if i was loves pajamas 
left alone and never worn
you could find me in a pile on the floor

lucky you, really

are you transposing this?
your selfish screams
that are by nature all my fault
i am to blame for the swiftly moving stream
all that i could have given
like a never ending string, time
whos hands were those?
and why does your love not blossom for me 
like a rose?
instead the veins blossom
like when you said you still cared 
and held my hand like a hot coal
then pushed it away under the table
my flight leaves at 8:54 and its only 7:16
what should i do

hate it when i drink 
hate it when i smoke
but you kill you body without knowing it
maybe i'll spend the rest of the night 
pining
or 
forcing toothpicks in forearms

she was ancient and called me back
she was new, young and fresh
the bargain they made was for pieces of me
hushing the night birds with a fiery look
a chemistry that left little burns on my heart
that was why i think you never did
the little scribbles 
on littler pieces of paper told a different story
that didn't end with happily everafter
but began with peter fighting his shadow
or me fighting my deamons
you're just one of many

she said
i do too
alot
no ones' buying it

at night in the silence i hear the whispers. when the clock ticks or the heater breaths its fire, the house breaks in a thousand places. thats when i hear them, whispers. whispers. i think that its the cats, or maybe the wind rustling papers outside. there is no wind and no paper. i am stuck to a tree with foot steps falling faster behind. its not there. i see them behind me, hear them behind me. the breating. the adrenalin pushes through my veins, the strength i need, then left with the weakness. like the time they killed arisotle.

when the rain clouds cleared, with my head, the end seemed nearer now. i thought it was all over. will you forgive me? i thought that you were the last. but the blood kept on coming, and your skin more pale by the second. there was fear in your eyes. fear.

the great fear of 2000, the chainsaw speech, the bleeding geometrical patterns, vaporizing hash between two butter knifes. the pool. the beer, and my feet like sponges. just to soak up the matter that i moved through. sister saviour, calling me to come and dance with her. here.

no. that wasn't it either. you left me and i cried, you left me for beni sato, faster cars and harder drugs. would leave my house at three in morning with whispered i love yous. like when rudy gets bit. i'd bite. a house of jealouse lovers.

gracefully making an exit, so that people were pleased with what they saw instead of what i just did. left you there. that time i swore was the last, even you made a glittery comeback, though. albeit, a dark and forbidding dance that stole my heart for a seventh or eighth final time. you remember the same if not better. while james dean's band played in the garage of an old resort town's slum. you were there holding my hand breaking all the rules. and the first time i went down to hell and came back in a bad way. you, you drenched my brow in cold kisses and warm rags, or vice versa. i woke up every morning cold and shaking while the sun baked the earth outside. a deluge of radiation to crisp my skin and blind my eyes. reflected away by some forgiving god.

and this is where i wake up, everytime. then the days become one and i realize that i need you. i need you bad. (and) every time i call you i feel sick. i don't know why. its cause every time you speak the phone buzzes, cracks, breaks up, boils like water, rumbles like the earth post gold mine and it hurts my head. like fear was a sound. i know behind the 'i miss you' you're lying. or laying. there has always been some one else. we were both afraid to admit it. was it a good way to love? yeah, it was and i take nothing back. well maybe nothing important, but time. the same track echoing through some 700 square feet of empty, old classroom. only echos of life left. "love, love will tear us apart again."

the sunlight filtered in the room turning the grey walls that of verdigris. the shadows now longer and sharper danced the death and the doom palm quivered in the wind. he shuddered awake. the gloden light blinding him at first. he didn't bother with the pushups today just straight to the shower. it didn't matter any way she never looked at him. wouldn't save him from himself, and they both knew it. theirs was meaningless, too sexed and too soon, for love so young. but at night when he couldn't sleep the dappled orange of the street lamp hypnotizing, unmoving and quite possibly waking the living dead, he would get sick. all sleep would be lost, while she laid next to him unknowing and unmoved. his was a love primal in character, her was fleeting light the wings of a fairy even a bat. he trembles and shakes while she sways and rolls, always eyes back. and the touching. the drugs made that great.

i brushed up against her at a party. said excuse me and walked on, always making for the back of the house and if i was lucky outdoors. i think she smelled pretty. and then i knew it, she did. she was standing right next to me looking up unblinking. she said something about orion. orion! as if he weren't already the bane of my excistence holding the head of medusa for whom would i kill? but what she said wasn't positive, in disrespect of the great cosmic hunter? she was mine and i had to have her.

i spent forever trying to make her love me, well i didn't really want to own her. just...

i still think she smelled pretty and i am pretty sure she still hate me.

the jungle moisture clung to clothes and body like an ex-girfriend on your pillow. the smoke swirrled around and dissapated in to the fast spinning fans of the bar.

dust rose from the morracan street. what shade there was, was either occupied or cost money to occupy. the mans severed head, flies buzzing about lazily, stared at the sun, unseeing.

and it was my brother then, head rolling in the dust of marakeesh. shildren walked lazily by. no one blinked and no one cried. someone buried the head apart from the body, just to make sure his western medicine couldn't save him.

there was a flash, a hot point just left of the setting sun. far to the west. or in our american and backwards way of thinking it was, far east.

it turned out to be thousands of souls flying towards heaven at an insanely high rate of speed.

we were floating above the vacant desert just like in peter pan. holding hands and beliving that we would never stop. but soon the hunger came and the cold was almost to much to bear. all at once we came crashing down, plummeting towards certain death. it was peters quick reflexes and know how that kept our bodies unscathed. who knew where we were? peter kept pointing at the sky saying it was that one then to the left, or is it the right? the stars twinkled in glee. he mumble under his breath. on the ground he was old moving and thinking, and tinkerbell barely took wing.

a vivid glow in my memory was the last time we saw him. he left us there, said he would return with the other lost boys and save us. he never came. got lost himself i suppose, or the magic wore off and he grew old in a heartbeat then lost the dream and fell to his own death. tinkerbell cried herself to death on his chest in cold air. the sky looks different where he pointed like there's a blank spot. like a star went black and died. never never land. will never be again. i still dream about killing pirates and living in a tree house.

the wife says i am crazy. i lock the windows and draw the curtains at night in our sons bedroom. i am sure there are more like him out there waiting for someone to belive. so they can feast on the flesh of young minds, and crush a few more dreams. i'd rather be a pirate. and so the souls fly on by, disapearing with bassinets in the dark and moving without sounds.

death whispered a lullabye.

bitten by nights poisonous teeth, not even dawn could save me.

and so there i wandered in the skeltal remains of happiness, an old carnival. the back alley was sweet with the smell of urine and fecis, i guess the human part should be assumed. it always smelled this way after rain, the whole city smelled this way. a bloody palor hung on the air in the bar with the cigarette smoke and stale beer. there were to many secrets here, to many whispered and hushed conversations. one wrong look might make me the t one, the next secret. you know the drill here just sit there and drink your two dollar shiner pints, and thank god for specials. patiently you wait for the next band to be over so you can hear the band you came to see. sonic. thats all you can say as their set begins. like a ghost ride in a fairy infested coked-up sci-fi book, like peter pan should be. chilling in the way that deaf people feel your screams and help rather than see your distress. and when its over you take a breath, realizing that you held it the whole time or very damn well near. the juke box comes back on. were you the only one listening? time to down a few more beers, thank you. there she is. that one girl you always see, never talk to. for that would ruin your relationship and after all thats all you have with her. its a strange crowd tonight as you look around quafing the last of your seventh or eighth pint. can't even taste the beer anymore. probably can't stand up and you find your self sitting next her at her table mumbling some incoherent shit. she knows its the beer you know its the beer and she takes you home anyway.

waiting and watching on a night no darker than the others held secrets that knew no ears. only to be whispered in the nothingness and fall dead on the lifeless limbs of school aged trees that coverd the corpses of school aged children alone in their beds. it followed you home and i it. wind soughed through the streets where rows of houses, bone white, in the black of night looked like the tombstones of a giants cemetary. and perhaps here is where history rests anyway. i caught your scent in the wake of your little affair like a ghost in the mirror and you knew i was behind you but couldn't look back against his arms. i heard the silent 'i love yous' in my chest. made myself cry so i couldn't follow you, but the scent, your perfume so strong that i stumbled blindly after you. remember when you left in a huff? i followed purely becuase i loved you. now i follow becuase hate's a better word for it plus the whole 'i need to kill you thing' makes me stronger. you fell asleep to many time to list and lied to many times to be trusted, so now i am gonna' kill you. and here i am waitng outside in the dark hall, this whole house sleeps except for you and 'whats his name'. creaks and settles this house does, breaths slowly and lets out sighs. just wanted to think of something beautiful, i waited for the bed to get cold, you never did.

the jolly old bum sauntered into the light, the limelight, in the corner of the pub. he had had a good day. looked especially pitiful and earned if not stole five bucks. had himslef three shots and left no room for a tip. but they knew he would be happy for the rest of the night. they asked him for one of his great storys, for the locals knew him well and didn't even mind his odor. sometimes he tells really good ones full of adventure and lies and sometimes he re-tells a shakespearean play, with him added in cleverly of course, but today was different. his face took on a grim pallor, and his eyes glazed over like fresh paint on a white car. from somewhere deep down a rumbling came like an EL train at the end of a tunnel. the light shone through his eyes like candles burning in a bag. i grew up with the devil so this excited me. hs voice came like rain on a tin roof, real slow at first and faint, then frighteningly loud and cacaphous. rasped out the tale in deafening silence so that the bar was quick to restart, in a less drunken stupor. all around us eyes and cheeks were shinning in fear or sadness i didn't know and didn't care to know then. in that instant the wind howled and crawled up our backs less selfish then the first time, but the door closed without letting the warmth of the night in. and there he stood just like the jolly bum had said he would, and was shrouded by the fire of a hundred burning souls eager to make him theirs. for his love would set us free. he said that he'd come a long way from a place no one should go to, or for that matter ever comes back from. he said it was the stomach of god. the bum vibratied this time with a holy fear and fire, let go his bowles and died there by the dart boards. when the coroner came he said the bum had been dead for days. whatever. we sat there as though we had been dead for days, until we realized it was only thursday and friday called on the phone asking us why weren't we rested. oh yeah and to remind us that it was casual dress day in the office. wore a black suit allday and took an extra hour for lunch to see that old jolly bum scattered between the railroad tracks one heading east and one west. but we've got to keep moving like i said i grew up with the devil so this excited me.

i think, or i could be wrong. just archived stuff from the previous weeks. if you missed something or this is your first time.

i kissed you like nothing could save us
nothing
it couldn't keep us from the endless night, the electric or the dust
it didn't
it wouldn't 
and what love coudn't do people started to
we were already to leave
heading towards the same generation, the same destination
but never leaving the spots we stood on
and 
when the world was already old and tasteless
a barren brown digrace
baked and dry
to leave?
so i kissed you like nothing would save us
nothing

the waking darkness
a simple dream
wrought with sweat
and that knowing
a rememberance of nightmare
and
too often i've seemed 
like the gentle hands of
critique
the one that draws  
tears to early or sometimes
not late enough
fuck it
and shouted
"for life"
(he)
made a damn devil
of curiosity
made a damn map
in the brain (the invisible city)
invisible sky
from her
now
the scratching started
in the wrists
up the elbow
(and) she will
swim in this blood
like a nightmare
the one i lost
the one - daylight burned away

in front and behind there is nothing but flat canvas. i am surrounded by a three foot bubble of depth. i painted that way because thats what i saw. i've been told that creating is better than destroying, but the latter feels so good. so we drink our little hearts out. and the self destruction has been going on since my grandma died. there were natural bonsai trees in the canyon that i slept near. where the fish dance and let you watch, where the water is cold and clear. it snowed in april, why won't it snow in may? today i will see not a canvas or a flat picture, but for real again.

the tortured brilliance of a mindless leech...and the fear comes back inches thick.

"take these." "what are they." "fuck it just take them." so he does. instantly he foams at the mouth, then hears the laughing. the laughing of the dog. he is on a plain now, wind blown and blanched. the sun has baked every thing out of this place. their is a house though. made of matchsticks, creaks in the wind. the dog gets up out of the shade. unsteadily makes its way towards him. in the way old dogs move when they really don't want to, they way i move. his face is half missing, or should we say there is no flesh, only bone and fur. the eyes are sunken and black. for some reason he has survived out here in this waste, luck would have it mostly bad. and the sun was hot. this was mans best friend, came to say hello, sniff at his hands for water or a tasty treat. he has nothing for the dog, but a single tear. the dog reacts instantly catching it, laughing all the time. the bleak house moves ever so slightly.

the phone rang just then and i woke up. told her we could never be friends.

but then sleep comes again. takes you to the same place. "take these." "what are they." "fuck it just take them." and you run. i run my mouth under the faucet. these pills are mine, then the whisper, the foam comes back. you've seen my face before, only millions of times, nothing dramatic. every time you look in the mirror. a reflection in the calm water before you dive in.

there he is again, when the house was young, the dog was young. the after taste is bitter, like a little bit of vomit. the sun has bleached nothing yet. the grass and trees are vibrant and full of life. life. then the sweat comes out cool and sweet, you can taste it. i've tasted it, fear, so long ago when we were young. when you removed my hand from your stomach while we slept in a fever. "fuck it just take them." i swear its the last time. i promise you we'llnever be here again. tomarrow the sun comes up and the fire hits. almost warm and comfortable, but you prefer the dark, so do i.

he is there in the shadows of the room sitting and watching as the first of winters snow falls. the lone light. that solemn oath he made to keep you with him always. when he woke up from the three fears you said you would love him, you said you would love me. we would never love again. experienced the last of the droughts before the hill washed into the river and made us beach front property.

she told me she loved it in the mornings. but i was never there for that, never there for anything. these were my pills remember? my story. the one you watch at night while sleeping with that pillow on your back and under your legs. always the same temperature, hot. the sweat comes again, but this time agonizing in its slow and painful flow from your pores. almost like you were bleeding. she bled for five days and never died, then did it again the next month. and i realized that growing up in a mitten was probably the most fucked thing i could have done. solitude was the friend i always had then. but now the noise comes crashing in me. on me. with me. we dance through the streets like children after a rain storm only it hasn't rained for a long time. her tears have kept my pillow moist, for long enough. the last hours before the sun comes up always finds her asleep. but the light fascinated me, like a moth to a flame. the best one yet. as i was burned not by the sun but by the silence she left. it was enormous, cold and heavy like the first snow of winter.

"i love you." was written with blood, not mine not hers but it was blood.

"i love you too." and i fell into the dark of sleep. these pills are mine.

all the fossil fuels are gone now. the only thing we can burn are bodies and fecis. the smell is horrible, i hate it. i hate the rot. the road side muddied with old caked blood. moistened from the melting of the snow pack. we still work, i pass you every day. you smile and think of me, hope that i am happy. or so i like to imagin. the silent treatment makes me crazy, we drink every weekend, fill our bodies with sin. but i am not the kind to tell you so. i not the kind that needs to tell you just what i want to do. i gave your message a birth, wide and obvious like a ship around rocks. remember it was me that broke it off? the call always comes in late, from japan or some other superpower, foreing and rich. they need me and i leave. always i come back right here to the place thats been killing me for years. he died here too. we never thought he would die. he was old and powerful, like classical music or a painting. you know the ones in the museums of france. like money used to be, and just knowing him gave me so much. i gave you so much. the days and nights were the same, the pit fights the dance halls. the push and shove, the hug and kiss, the pint and stool. and we loved it. he was there all along, laughing in his way. in that silent rasp, like the rustling of autumn leaves on the wind. papers blowing through the streets.

it all ended. i never found you after you left, never found out whos blood it was that stained my wall and memory for the last fifteen years. i started smoking. "do you have a light?" you never answered, even though you always had one. your hair was swirled with the blue smoke, the orange and red of the cherry. lit and unlit your face, on the wooden bar, the ash tray full of the last of their souls. napkins with scribbles and numbers and names littered the floor. only lucky enough to find someone you knew if you knew where the bar was going to be the next night. it floated on, the different places, and faces. always in the crowd i was. gave up real work. to find you in that smokey hell. crystalized seven lungs and ruined three livers, none my own. those were safely stored in the bio-center. we all came out when the sun went down. he came out when the sun went down, the pills frozen to the roof of his mouth waiting for the right time. the past wanted to come back. "what the fuck are they? is it gonna fuck me up?" "yeah." as he kissed her full of the medicine, full of the past and the pain. she became the dream. told her the same old, remember line, this is my face you've seen in the mirror all those years. in darkness before the lights went on or just as they went out. in the wet of the street. the gloss of the paint, the bullet proof glass of the last of the automobiles. i must of called your name a thousand times that night. she wandered off in the mist of life, a life not hers. remembered some of the more lucid for me, with me. and here blood screamed love. her smell earthy and sweet. i took her life, hers for yours. there was no way out.

a sleeper must awaken. it was my last trip to the past. they had been on to me and my pain, a spike in the information. the gestault that lookes surprisingly like an angel with broken wings. i used to watch her work. then hold on until it starts to hurt. her laugh played through the halls of the creaking matchstick house. my gut busted up inside like a church, the day after his coming the third time. the dog was laughing again. his sunken eyes roving the plain for that man, his best friend. here i was concerned with love. the dog was merely thirsty. that tear gave him life for one last day. we would do it again and again.

the beeping came every one point seven seconds. it got louder. the beeping kept coming. then the ringing and again i aswered the phone, the red indicator burning the sleep from my eyes. i rolled over and woke you up, remember? then left for my own house. you called in pain and sadness, said it would prevail, our love. but it was the last time i held you in sleep, the last time i even wanted to hold you. gave the pills away, and slept by myself all alone. that good old feeling.

"i love you." was smeared from my wrists on the steamy tiles of the shower.

she walked away, "i know."

it was the merge, that time when night and day became one contiguous shade of grey. a fiery destruction lit its path. it destroyed me. the desert was there on my shoulders, pushing, pulling me down. the heat stole everything. there was that light that wanted to kill me. unblinking, it always looked down on me. when she never wavered under my stare when i wanted to kill her, unblinking. so under the enormous pressure i buckled into a thousand tiny peices. it swallowed me whole. where was love then, held in my extremely bad hands, where they fit like gloves. next to mine, you'll never find me. and at last her grip wrested from mine by the invisible stench of death. let go after years of waiting, living the dream time. the swirling black and blue on her face let them know it was the right thing to do, just let her cry.

"i know..." she said in a whisper. the kind that would send shivers up your spine. so the tears came and washed it all away. the bottle of pills slipped from her hands. my pills echoed down the corridor like ripples in a pond. she spun to catch the speaker but i was gone. rolled under the counter forgoten. studied them forever, then it was over. that bitter taste left our mouths that night in what was left of home, in the days before the real dark. in the days before you came. finaly we woke up from it all, and the earth was on fire. the flames licked heaven, but heaven had her own plans to keep it all in to punish us for our good behavior. then she let the cosmos have its way with our tiny rock. the radiation made sure there was no life, no life at all. even those persistent roaches died, one by one along side the humans. or vice versa.

almost one long poem, my life in the vein of fear and love.

very short stories, like those little dreams you have when falling asleep.

copyright 1983-2004. kyle anaya.