I can imagine the chest-spreaders inserted as they hooked into the ribs. Cold corpse remains of what a few hours ago was a birthday boy. I imagine the cartilage cracking and bending as they separate the membranes to fish out the organs for weight and testing, though the cause of death was pretty clear. She had told me when she went to identify the body that the top of his head was smashed into a cone shape, it had been embedded into the tree. One eye dangling down his cheek, looking in a different direction than the other. I'm not too scared to face these demons, I want to know. I want to know what she saw. I would have lived this for him if I could go back and do that. She said his legs were jammed up and into his chest. I didn't see the wreckage but there was a lot of glass. She found his cell phone in a branch. There was glass in the tree, as if it had grown there the whole time. Glass from his window which his head went through and then into the bark. They say there was a faint pulse, that the first to arrive had seen momentarily he was alive, albeit in some most likely brain-dead manner. That's not really living. His liver was lacerated. Even if his skull hadn't been caved in I feel like he wouldn't have survived due to that. But perhaps it's possible. So at the morgue, what do they do? Did they open the shattered casing of his skull and remove the remnants of his obliterated brain matter? Throw it in a scale, weigh it out...Remove the organs, weigh them out...Slice off a piece of lacerated liver for toxicity tests, tests show he was not intoxicated. Happy birthday, birthday boy. It was your night, the one you'd dreamt about for so long. When black and white dreams turn to color dreams of your death on your birthday, it has to mean something. You shouldn't have gone, shouldn't have gone. Should never have trusted. So they sewed you back up, a hollow shell of a human, innards removed. At the wake you looked nothing like you. Body rigid and thin, they didn't do the best job making you look normal but what the fuck could you really do with a train wreck like that? There's no fixing that, no making that look pretty. Eyelids sunken in. Could've stuffed them with more cotton, at least make it seem like there's something there. Makeup covering abrasions on your cheek. I could still see them. I tried so hard, tried to reach over your body to place an item in the casket with you. My god, that was the most horrifying thing. Just being there next to your lifeless form, reaching. Over. Terrified. Arm stretching, hand shaking. I got on my tip-toes. To reach. I almost couldn't make it without...I just...it was so hard...You're not there anymore. You're nowhere. You don't exist anymore. There is no god, there is no heaven, there is simply the lack of existence after death. A bright flame snuffed out, a life stolen, extinguished without mercy. The days that followed, I hallucinated out of grief. And at night I saw you in my head, I saw your corpse stiffly walking through the room, turning your head and looking at me with eyes that were closed. Thin-chested and straight-armed, stiff-legged and dead. A walking shell. Looking at me with eyes that were closed.

Expendable like bridges burnt
you told me what I was, wish you'd told me what I weren't.

He dies slowly in his chair
when he looks to the left there's no one there
and when there's no one home he'll die alone

You don't want me, I'm dead inside
get away before I drag you down.

A different shade of red

Has my body betrayed my mind yet again? My form is nothing more than a prison. I may be trapped inside this vessel though I will not be parasite-stricken. What a shitty ride, this transportation sucks.

Cold wind churns over me
dying heart burns rapidly

It's a silly notion but one that makes me happy, can't I be happy?
It's a stupid idea though I can't stop myself, I wish I knew how

I still don't see how I exist in this puzzle of reality
bruised my back just from trying to fit
cut and bleeding

He feeds one aspect of me but gives nothing to the rest
Stiffened and deformed I burn in the sun
Hiding in the shadows enveloped in abnormality
Crawling through dead leaves grasping for reality


He starves what's left of me, I dwell on the past
Bloated ego disten

Psychiatry and chemical lobotomies: Lives lost before they had a chance to live

Generation RX, as I watch this documentary on the industry of drugging children for profit without care or understanding to how the drugs effect their minds I consider myself lucky to have turned out the way I have. I was one of those children. Over the course of 6 years I was prescribed a plethora of psychotropic and sleep medications only to serve as a mere peon to a money-making scheme for Big Pharma. More and more in recent years children who are deemed defective by uncaring psychiatrists are thrown under foot as stepping stones for the pharmacological industry when little is understood as to what was going wrong in the children's brains. In many instances these drugs are like sweeping a pile of dirt under a carpet to not fix, but hide the disarray, as opposed to facing the issue and finding the root and cause of the problem.
What many don't understand is that these drugs are often the cause of more problems themselves.

Research shows that in the cases of the Columbine shootings and other recent school shootings the perpetrators of the homicides had been on or had taken some sort of psychotropic medications, names such as Prozac and Trazodone suddenly become familiar. Were these children with their drug-altered still-developing minds born horrendous murderers? Or were they victims of chemical lobotomies?

One of the most common terms thrown around lately "ADHD" seems to become so popular amongst psychiatrists that the diagnosis has grown like the manic fervor of a frothing dog.
"Does your child have difficulty concentrating in school? Does he or she tend to disobey your orders? Do they seem hyperactive and unfocused? You child may have ADHD and we have a prescription that can help."
What child doesn't do those things? It is rare when they don't, but does that mean that those children are defective and in need of a quick fix to mend their "broken" mental capabilities? In truth the drug is often over-prescribed and used as a band-aid sold to lazy parents that feel they don't have the time or energy to properly raise their children or confront the issues their children may have. Psychotropics are often used as pharmacological babysitters.

Tightrope-walking on barbed wire
I keep thinking there's something I forgot to do
I feel compressed on the inside
Something's wrong in my head

That one day

I wished I had cancer

I screamed at the doctor:

"Get this thing outta me

take from me anything

I don't want this disease

cut this thing out of me!"

I miss you, Dad.

Silently falling apart, my world is crushed. Rocking back and forth on my heels shaking my head with strangled gasps. It doesn't get easier with the years. Why did you do this to me? If things could be different I'd take your place. One fatal measurement and I'm here alone. Set flame to the drug to bring life to the needle, take life from the man who gave life to me. With you I could have been everything, without you I wait for the end. The calm comfort of the darkness to swallow my vision.
Some of us make bad choices, some of us get lucky. Some of us turn our lives around. Some of us are sick and some of us die. Some of us are ruined and some of us cry. Back then you were the only friend I had, I was too young to have to lose my dad. How many times can I beat my fists into the ground? I'm enveloped by pain and hate. Bleed like I bleed I want to make everyone feel my pain. I want them to hurt. In the end we're all the same, in the end we're all nothing. I'll never see you again. I try hard to envision your face, and when I close my eyes the harder I try all I see are black shapes in the darkness of my mind's eye. It's like being mentally blind. I reach out with my thoughts and feel your face but I can't see it myself. What is wrong with me? I want to go back to sleep. My existence is a waste of time. Why are we capable of suffering such pain? It puts me in a seething rage. Now I just want to kill and maim, Daddy, was I born this way?

January 13th 1959-August 13th 1997

Ethereal and as ephemeral as the mists she flooded my thoughts and filled my mind with fog.

I have my father's eyes and my mother's lack of shame. They were both very intelligent but I inherited my father's forgetfulness and poor decision making. I like to think forgetfulness is the sign of a busy mind. I inherited my abrasive personality from my mother but my offensive and morbid sense of humor is all my own. Are we all just the combined mistakes from both our parents? Dad had a bad stomach I think, pretty sure that's where I get mine from, he used to drink baking soda. They both did bad things but I think I turned out alright. They also built me strong, thought I don't know who I got my hate from. Mom said she never thought they were really in love. Love, but not IN love. She said he had no passion for anything after the heroin. But goddamnit he wasn't always on that shit. Tell me what he liked, what kind of man he was, because all I remember are the good things and a few of the bad, but he was god in my eyes no matter what. I have the god but I want to know the man. He made mistakes, this is true. But besides working on the cars and taking me to movies every Sunday and hanging out of the forest preserve flying kites tell me what he had interest in, hobbies, music he liked. I get my sense of honesty from the lack of it from either of them. I don't do drugs and I rarely drink, opposite of both of them.

Mama said "it's normal to want to die
most people think like that every once in awhile"
it comes up and I push it back down again
like the acid reflux from my esophageal duct
your naivete settles on my skin
similar to nuclear ash blown in from the wind
I hate you for being so pure
but I hope you know I hate myself more

I ask myself what am I doing here, I'm in this familiar situation
how could I go back to something that's caused me so much humiliation
but you're the puppeteer, and you use my veins as a marionette
just scratch under my chin a little bit and I'll be your pet

Mother Destroyer

Destroyer, Devourer

I hate myself for letting you go,
you had been the perfect zygote.
I made you mine and corrupted you
with my essence, I aborted your wide eyes
and childlike innocence.
You deserved better than me, no less,
I then devoured you and received smug satisfaction
from the sins of your flesh.


Mother, Lover

Drain me dry. Be my parasite.
I can feel your pain.
Be my child. I'm your mother now.
I will keep you safe.
Drink from my breast,
infest, this is parasitism not incest,
I need your body to ingest, I'll keep
you close to my heart, deep in my chest.

Fog

I've burned a couple friendships
over the precipitation's calm complacence
I wish I would learn a little time management
I don't know how to cope with anything that needs maintenance

everybody gets mad at me for it and it never clicks
when time passes by I guess I just don't see it
so for some reason I can't see the forest for the trees
the sands of the hourglass pass through me like wind in the leaves

then sometimes my thoughts and pulse start to race
I begin to feel out of place and I inadvertently alienate
and soon the fog rolls in with no explanation
but in the end there's no one left to placate

I really never meant to make you cry
I do the things that I do and I just don't know why
but sometimes I'd just rather be standing alone in the fog
alone in my head, at one with the dark

Naive boy

I prayed to the good lawd to send me a boy
the good lawd, he sent me, sent me an 18 year old toy
now no matter what I do I can't get rid of this kid
he's stuck to me like glue

I'm not your mommy
I'm not your daddy
I'm not your saving grace

Now I, I think he wants to say "I love you"
and I don't want to hurt him but I'm sure he's quite a fool
he could be anything to anyone
though to me he's only a tool

I'm not your angel
I'm not your savior
I'm not your lackluster kiss

You were good for a few,
and, and we've even had a bit of fun too
but I don't really see myself at all in you
and I don't know what you see in me so I think we should let it be


I'm not your "baby"
I'm not your game
I'm not your fate

Head hurts, so pop a couple excedrin for migraine relief
take ranitidine for the acid as stomach begins to bleed
migraine's still not gone, take 500mg of acetaminophen
nausea starts, so now I'm taking dramamine
head still hurts so take one more excedrin
maybe I should also eat a gummy vitamin
in case I'm lacking a certain vital nutrient
drink some milk to settle the acid pain
dab nostrils with oil of soothing jasmine again
perhaps this will aid in some relaxation
head still hurts, so take one more excedrin
dilate the blood vessels, drink a little caffeine
now I have nausea, acid reflux and a migraine
nothing I take seems to stop the pain

head still hurts, take another excedrin.

Some thoughts better left unspoken

You can do pretty much anything to a corpse within reason, kick it and it won't bleed, bruise or swell up. The skin can tear though, don't make the skin tear. After a few days it'll be hard enough that the fat doesn't leak out, but still, you don't want the skin to tear.

You could use a type of spirit gum or even duct tape if you had to mend the skin, it's a lot like patching a leather couch. Just make sure you keep the skin clean before applying or it could get messy and look poorly done. You don't want it to look messy, you want it to look nice and clean.

Flotsam

I am floating in an ocean.


The depths are alien and entirely immeasurable.

It is dark and I am alone.\

The waves rock me, lulling me into sweet oblivion/.



The saltwater sting in my eyes is the only thing I feel amidst the cold and numbness of my prostrate body/ .


Floating along, floating a(L)one.



BOBBING UP AND DOWN/.//.

S0ul served chilled.



Stiffened limbs akimbo. Mouth agape.


Deadening.


/\Waves slowly churning-mouth fills with foam and seaweed.


I am euphoric with the cleansing.


The black calm.

I just lay there.


I just lay there.

I lay \there drifting and my hair tangles





,gets caught in my


eyelashes .

It's a wonderfully gloomy and rainy day, perfectly suiting my mood and perfect for sleeping but I can not. Today is the 15 year anniversary of the death of my father. My dad...What do I really do or say anymore? Last year on Father's Day I sat on the bed of his tombstone implanted flat into the ground and screamed at the sky, flailing and beating my fists into the ground wondering why this had to happen to him? To me? Why had he done what he did? I don't blame him though, I can't how could I?

You left your little girl here. I'm still here, I'm still your little girl and I haven't really grown up and I'll never grow up without you.

Feverish Infatutation

You're Christ-like to me with your youth and beauty
lips that curve slightly at the corners when you see me
ocean-blue eyes open so wide and suddenly I feel alive
you stare into my soul and with a look you get me high

the best of me

There's that familiar feeling again
in the pit of my chest and heart
the unsettling knowledge that you're back on the streets
when's it going to stop?
I block every number you call me from
it hurts, but I'm mostly gone and there's nothing to discuss
logic doesn't sit well with you
and you've got nothing to say but it was all my fault
as if I did anything but try to heal you
leave me a voicemail about hating me
leave me a voicemail about you're sorry
leave me a voicemail about you love me
leave me a voicemail about suicide
I've got nothing left to say
I gave you all I had
and you destroyed the best of me

Silent Watcher

That right there was my perfect little family
over the years I was going to watch them grow
they were the ones to fill me with hope
then I found out things I didn't want to know
turns out they weren't really happy at all.

Unfinished

We're made of the same cloth, so don't desecrate me.
He yelled at me and made me cry when I showed him my list of people I wanted to die.
I musta been about 8. I learned from those mistakes.
You're nothing special and you're looking pretty old.
Wannabes make me laugh.

I hate all reminders of you. I hate you. I love you. I hate that there is someone out there just like you. He's in this very town. Looks like you and acts like you, sings the way you do. Draws me closer and repels me. Get the fuck away. Frustration. A creature like him shouldn't exist and neither should you. I love you. Get the fuck away from me. I hate you. I love you.
It's over.

The same chipped paint. Different location, same room. The one I'd always sat my back against it's wall, staring up at the ceiling, noticing how "Real" everything looks. No fake wood paneling this time, but the same stained, off-white ceiling. It always comes down to this. Here I am, sitting here on my bed, alone, always alone. The same bittersweet suffering. Different day, same pain. My pupils always constrict in this mood. They get so small I can hardly see. What I can see though is the more things change, the more they stay the same. Always in a box. Alone in a box, live in a box, die in a box, buried in a box. I'll just lay here, hungry and rotting.

The days all blur together with no real sense of purpose, whether I'm working or not it makes no difference. Why am I here? I didn't ask for this. I'm tired of existing so much. If we could all just die out as a species it'd be so fine. I'm getting really sick of a thing called "time".

Shhh, calm down, it'll be okay, we're all going to die soon one day anyways.
Hush, hush, we're on our way down now. There's nothing anyone can do and it'll be the end soon.

I'm bored. It's not so much the suffering as the lack of feeling anything beautiful. The magic in this life has died. There's nothing left but cold, stark reality and I think that I must see it better than most. Everything is temporary. What's the point of trying to save money, save lives, save anything when it all ends so quickly?

I'm waiting, still just waiting. I always have been. I was born waiting. I never wanted to be here. The moment I could think I knew I wasn't meant for this. What's the point of resting if you don't get any sleep? You teeter on the edge of breaking, yet it gives you enough to feebly wander on. Is it normal to be tired all the time? I can't remember a restful night of sleep in many years. I always wake up feeling remorse or regret, or maybe even just disappointment. Why am I still here? Again? Today? It's another day? Really? Why?

I open my eyes, sigh and pull myself out of bed. It's the hardest thing in the world to do. Maybe if I actually slept soundly and didn't wake up every hour it might feel okay.
Still, I open my eyes, no light streaming down, and if it had it wouldn't be beautiful anyways, it'd just keep me awake, laying there somewhere between sleep and consciousness, not dead but dreaming.

...and on him blinked eyes with the dullness of a child. There was no intelligence there and you could see no glow from within.

The Monster (Part 2) Kali

Satiate the lust
Satisfy the urge to kill
Kids like to kill, it's true
I did and so did you

Part the flesh with blade
make me feel your sincerity
fuck me as I fuck your every wound
I've always secretly loved this part of me

There's no shame in fulfilling the Beast
I can make you love me
I want to crush your hopes and dreams
before I disembowel you externally

Here I sit, I simmer and stir
the rage beneath doesn't like to wait
it grows exponentially
I want to cut out your eyes and keep them with me

You can make me love you
I'll love you hard before I kill you
I want nothing more in this life
than the excess of my extreme desires

Drag you across the pavement
skin sticking to concrete like moist ribbons
DNA that's as wet as the wholeness of me
inward and outward delight

I can wear your intestines like a suit
I'm more man than you'll ever be
inside my chest lives a red storm
love and hate are really the same thing

I try to quell manipulation
keep down the violence
quiet the maelstrom
live for more than hedonism
but this is the true nature of the inner being
open up your third eye
enlightenment comes not from salvation
that's all lies
you come from me
I come from Destruction
Destruction is Purity

Kids like to kill
It's true
I loved it every day and so did you

Monster (Part 1)

The Monster is inside of me
the Whore I can hear mewl and breathe
She keeps an eye on everything
behind the scenes She pulls the strings

I lay Her down to say good night
but in the end She wins the fight
She finds a way to complete Her life
the Monster does this out of spite

The Monster is inside of me
The Monster is inside of me
The Monster is inside of me

It's all true

Sinking into mental illness, this place makes me feel empty and alone, it's like a house made of bones. Like a ripple that time forgot, nothing ever changes from within, but from without I grow older, wrinkles lace my face like frost-lines bloom across a frozen lake. I don't know how to deal with it. It is here where I feel least real. Dead birds sift through the walls like grains of sand they land on the floor to rot, cold and stark. There is no longer a "him" or a "you", there is no one left to write to, no audience, and I will not bow out but I will slowly fade away. The clock beats on ever faster and life about and around changes and time does go on and another day is lost as I achieve the grandest finale of infinite nothingness. I can see it in my dreams. The last shiver.

Moth to flame.

Time to sever ties and cut losses
it was beautiful knowing you
thanks for giving me a place to sigh
you're ugly and boring without your face on
time to cut losses and sever ties
getting sick of all the lies
I just keep on keepin' on
I'm done experimenting with life
studying you and your vomit of cigarette ash
as people grow old they begin to die
it's fun to watch the skin form lines
and I notice the bags under your eyes
anywhere not here is a 2-hour drive
you hate who I am and that makes me smile
because what you hate is what you wanted
the whole time

I think I'm paranoid

Sometimes I feel someone in the back of my head, spread out across brain matter, watching me, trickling fingers in and around neural pathways, a tingling like paranoia.
The monster is inside me. The monster is me.

I feel it watching me, observing me when I'm alone, when I'm driving alone at night I feel the eyes on me, or perhaps within and around me. A somewhat menacing sensation like I'm missing something. Maybe something is about to happen, a suspense, a build-up, but nothing ever happens.

Every now and then when I'm more alone than anything, I don't really feel alone at all.

relapse

It's sad to say you're like a drug, and when your blood mixes with mine it's the best I've felt in my entire life. The longer I go, the worse I feel and I haven't had a fix in awhile. I don't know how to get past this. I don't know how to stop. The more of you I get the more damage is done, and when you're gone the damage doesn't stop. Do you even give a fuck? Did you ever? You've destroyed me completely and utterly. I'm useless now. I'm nothing. You've embedded your barbs into my veins as you force your addictive poison in. I've got no way out, there's only relapse and overdose.

Sleep is eluding me
all I want is a reason to continue to be
to exist more than simply
yet I can't come up with anything
to make life worth living
and I've got nothing worth giving

Every day the same nightmare for months. You relapse and we fight, and I hit you in the face repeatedly and it does nothing. It happened. All of it, the whole dream came true. You relapsed and I hit you in the face over and over, and just like the dream it did nothing. Now I don't know whether I'm awake and this is real or I'm still dreaming...

I'm so tired I can't think or sleep
and I'm so hungry I don't want to eat

If I still had a father
would I also have a God?
If I had had a mother
would I now have a God?
If I could remember more than suffering
would I have salvation?
If I had had a sister
would I now have hope?


------------------------------------------
I was alone.
I had no family.
Somehow we were all separate people
living separate lives
in the same house.
Together apart.

If walls could talk
they wouldn't
because we never did.

I was alone.
Existing inside my head.
Living within my mind.
A thing hollow with nothing inside.
It's just dark in there.
I couldn't make it go away.

I couldn't make them love each other.
I couldn't make her be my mother.
I wonder what he saw when he looked in the mirror.
If he had looked at me he might have seen himself.
I looked just like him.

I tried to hang myself when I was seven.
I told myself I wouldn't do that again.

I didn't know why my sister hated me.
She used to hurt me.
I was scared all the time.
She was six years older.
That's a lot.



They cheated
They lied
She wanted a divorce
He overdosed
I was ten
She found someone else
He tried to kill her
She smoked crack
We lost the house
I moved away
My aunt said she was scared of me
She kicked me out
I was thrown away
She still smoked crack
We lived in a motel
We moved again
I dropped out
Six years of meds
It never helped

Past-life Regression

Do we fade away, or melt back into what we once were? Do we become something entirely different?

I wish I could pause this life and then exit quietly just to see what's past this, and then if I don't like it, resume.

Are memories leaking through?

Thoughts, memories, they're all we really have of ourselves. So many say not to live in the past, but it's the only thing that's known, that's reliable, that we can count on. The past is all we know. The future is uncertain. The future may not exist at all.
The past holds the key to everything, it shapes the future. The future is a mewling baby drenched in the sweat and tears and grime of the past.
The past is us, and we are the past.

Do we really exist, or are we just dreaming?
Am I waking up, or am I just crazy?

So maybe there's been an anomaly. Hearing Latin words in my head and feeling like I should kill myself-not out of depression, but because everything is wrong and I'm not supposed to even exist here. I'm supposed to be somewhere else. Maybe suicide isn't the coward's way out, but the only way to pass some sort of test to see if we're strong enough to seek truth.

Maybe in this linear timeline there has been a wink.

-------------------------0---------------------

Things change forever. The wink is some sort of reality-altering event.


So this was our time and reality:

-----------------------------------------------


This was the event:

-------------------------0---------------------



This is our reality afterwards, it branches off, and two separate realities on parallel timelines occur:

-------------------------0<=====

Very basic idea. If this were true, it would probably happen an infinite number of times.


Maybe reality as we know it is like the shifting tectonic plates underneath the earth's crust, reality could shift in and out of place numerous times, indefinitely.
Maybe it's like an iceberg, we're living on the surface, and if we delved just a bit deeper we could see what's really going on.

Or maybe there's nothing more than this existence, which would seem pretty meaningless. I wish I could know.

Dominae, Dominae, Deus ex Dominae
Dominae, Dominae, Deus ex Dominae
Dominae, Dominae, Deus ex Dominae
Dominae, Dominae, Deus ex Dominae
Dominae, Dominae, Deus ex Dominae

I am the canvas
shrouded with a halo of data
I seek truth
projecting a white light
of hot anticipation

You are the template
an anomaly of lies
broken files and shattered memories
you climb inside
and infect my reasoning

Haiku

Rippling gelatin
Sea of quivering, fat flesh
you are disgusting

...and out of the primordial dusts I arose and built myself an empire, and nothing can take that away from me ever...

All that's in those eyes are lies

she has made so many untruths of herself

that that's all she has become

she doesn't know herself, she's dead inside

bloated corpse in amniotic fluid.

The Things I've Seen, The Things He's Shown Me

My eyes thirstily drinking it all in, I'd never seen anything so pure in my life. He channeled the universe through the focal point of his lens and created something I never thought I would see. I can't even begin to-....

The quiet man with the sad soul had focused the exquisite beauty of his very being into his photographs. Over the years since we last met he has become profoundly and infinitely adept at creating such rapturous art that I have so much difficulty in even putting stupid, simple human words to it. Silly mouth-sounds in all of the world's most beautiful languages could never begin to express, define, or describe the catharsis with which his photographs inflict upon me. He himself is magic, and he has burnt away all the impurities found in life and has unveiled the cleanest, purest reason for existence:

TRUTH.

Heart attack, sweet, sweet heart attack. Where do you go when you don't know where you wanna go when you die, when you die, when you die? Slip past a galaxy, reincarnate out of misery, get reborn into multiplicity. Sigh, sigh, lie.

Womb.

Tearing it down like old wallpaper. Ugly patterns, pretty, pretty blood. Purple sky bruised, bleeding and leprosy plagued. Husk. Happy husk. DO NOT DELETE ME. Evolve into a new species.

I wonder where my ability to create went. Did the pharmacopoeia destroy it or was it only there because of that? Could I create before, or was the ability lost after weaning myself off the meds? I wish I could focus like I used to...I consider getting back on them...just so I can write like I used to, make art, just so I can have ambition to create. I feel like some dying creature, mewling and weak.

The warm liquid crosses my tongue, an earthy bitterness of caffeinated broth, abortifacient in all it's glory. I look at him from across the room. You never were any better than the rest. You never were special. Your high opinion of yourself, your boring mannerisms...I was sick of you before I ever met you. All you are is shallow surface data... You're filler people. Just filler. Nothing more.

Happy Birthday Jordan Aris-Rashaun Jackson 11-10-90 to 11-11-10

today my veins are wires and flesh feels stretched tight over barbed latticework
nothing's left inside from what once was a piece of me that died
I slam my bones through the floor with a vision of what was lost
can't think, can't speak, can't live, can't do anything
brain stutters and I'm seizing in pain seeking to kill the void
in the catacombs of my mind there's so many places to hide
lips crack and bleed from how many times I've whispered your name
throat's drying up and gasps gritty like sandpaper
all thoughts of you colliding, collapsing in my head
you knew, you knew, but you never told me today you'd be dead

The Lord of the Flies

[I came across a poem/song I wrote when I was 14 or 15, written with pencil on lined notebook paper, how refreshing. Those were the days. I could create back then...so the structure is crap, but who cares? I think it's awesome.]


On helicopter wings they fly to the ground
and bury themselves in the corpse
in manic ecstasy they suck up the blood
as they crawl in, over, and around

no need to rush
there's much left to spare
soon you will learn to fly
and then we will spread our kingdom of fear
you, my friend, and I

[chorus]
sing my sweet flies
swarm of militant feasting
choreograph your beautiful dance
let your children swim
beneath the skin
and gorge until they are fat
[chorus]

decimate and destroy the calm
in an abrupt awakening of screams
infiltrate every nook and cranny
of their destined to be lost dreams

cover their bodies in blanket horde
liquefy their eyes
and then you will gather in black masses
with me, the Lord of the Flies

[chorus]
sing my sweet flies
swarm of militant feasting
choreograph your beautiful dance
let your children swim
beneath the skin
and gorge until they are fat
[chorus]

soon the world will be our playground
bleak and grey she will be
she will cry tears of blood
in a flood of carnage and eternity

guardsmen of Heaven
will fire their bows
and He will engulf the world in flames
then t'will be a lifeless land of woes
yet we'll still keep playing our games


[chorus]
sing my sweet flies
swarm of militant feasting
choreograph your beautiful dance
let your children swim
beneath the skin
and gorge until they are fat
[chorus]


and the world is reborn again and again
forever in it's cycle of pain
He will always rebuild it
and we will corrupt it

in this oblivion we'll always remain

I can see the dark side of the moon from here, can you see it? It has monsters writhing on it like maggots. They're falling from the sky like the Lunar Cry...

There's nothing but sadness and misery after you've left...She says you make her heart smile, but how can she smile when you're dead? Do they forget?

I don't want the pain to stop. I want them all to suffer with me. I'm held together so loosely. I dream of you. I don't want to ever stop hurting over you. I don't ever want to go numb. I don't ever want to forget.

So these days I'm the walking dead and I wish I could be put to rest right with you...because really, none of this is worth it.

I use sarcasm to hide the pain. I try to make others smile so that one day when I'm gone I'll be loved, but in the end...

We are all forgotten.

silent vibrations
in electric veins...
washing over like a wave

it's already in my blood
I just don't know it but..
it's there for good

I'm falling in and out
drifting down and down and down...
there's no way around it

I can never escape
this hereditary fate...
I feel it comfort me

push the needle deeper
show you where the pain hurts...
I'm going back to sleep

I feel my back breaking
another life the world is taking...
I never really wanted it

I'll give you what is yours
and you can have what is mine...
split and divide

It's already played out
we all know without a doubt...
I'm going to die

Jordan

I dreamt of you today. We were at the place we worked at together and I saw your head looking around a corner at me, your hair red and messy like it would get when you were being funny and goofing around...You smiled at me and then I smiled and laughed because I was happy to see you and you were alive, I thought you were alive again, I thought it was real. Then you were standing next to me suddenly, this time your hair was black and longer like it used to be...and then I noticed the huge gash on the right side of your skull...it looked like it was healing I think, but it was in the same place it would've been. I asked why you were so short suddenly, I was confused, you weren't as tall as you used to be, but you just smiled and hugged me. You never say anything to me. You always just smile. Then I woke up in my dark room and ran out to the living room. I sat on the couch and told someone you had just visited me, and then I felt your presence in the hallway. I said you're coming back for me. I felt someone about to enter the room, I thought it was you, it wasn't. It was something 7 foot tall, wearing a long coat. It's head just a blank white mask floating on top of where the neck should've been but wasn't. Light blue eyes looked out at me from behind the featureless mask. It attacked me and I woke up from my dream within a dream. I woke up and you were still dead. I woke up and my world fell away at my feet. I woke up and felt the pain of you dying all over again because I didn't realize I was dreaming, all I know was you were in front of me again, smiling and I thought it was real. I woke up and my heart raced, hurting from adrenaline...I woke up and I wished I was dead.

untouchable

I'm all anger, it courses through me like hot lead in my veins. My mind has already fled the scene of this crime though my body's been left behind. I blow my eardrums out because it makes me feel alive. Everyone else is in control of my life.

Left to the mercy of a stranger, can you put me up for the night? If I licked my lips and spread my legs a little would that make everything alright? There is no name for a thing like me. I always arrive with a disclaimer: fantasy is better than reality.

Your Christ is your own dick, and that's pretty pathetic because what is Christ anyway but a bunch of fucking bullshit? A couple inches of what you call "glory", is that all you ever want to be? You could do so much better with yourself if you weren't lost in your vanity.

They say "as above, so below" but I'm not beneath anyone because I stand alone.

Something my little brother Jordan wrote that comes to mind after a dream I had:

"You hit me up

when your luck is tried.

when you've given up

and lost your pride

you know that I'll always be there

cause I'm the only one who cares...oh....



---------------

[chorus]x2

Confuse me....Abuse me...

You make me feel like a slut...

Confuse me....Abuse me...

You make me feel like a slut..

Confuse me....Abuse me...

is that what you really want?



-----------------

Lock up your heart and throw away the key

never knowing how special you'll always be to me

you leave me nothing but your scent in my sheets

just to show me you don't have to sow

what you reap...oh....

-----------------

[chorus]x2

-----------------

lips locked. our souls are severed.

rip me apart from the inside out.

just to put me back together.

-----------------

[chorus]x2

-----------------

IS THAT WHAT YOU FUCKING WANT?!?!

IS THAT WHAT YOU FUCKING WANT?!?!

IS THAT WHAT YOU FUCKING WANT?!?!

IS THAT WHAT YOU FUCKING WANT?!?!"

By Jordan Aris-Rashaun Jackson

Let's shed our lives and come back as different entities
If we blow our brains out will we be reborn as stars?

I want to be homeless. I want to love her. I'm not sure what life is. I want to be alone in the snow. I want to sleep in a field in Montana at night. Under stars, miles away from humans. I want more. I want less. My existence is ephemeral. I think I should write more to leave a legacy for when I'm gone. A legacy that no one will ever read. It might be any day. I don't like what I write. I wish I could think like Mei. New cds disappoint me. Throat's sore. Tumor is growing. That will be the end if nothing else. It's a genetic fail-safe. No one knows yet. It's okay. Frost is coming. Unpleasant but crisp it burns. Unyielding. Relentless. No mercy. I should read more. I don't have time though. I don't know how to do anything. I'm not good at anything either. It's okay. Some people are just here. Some people aren't meant to do anything. Maybe I'm filler. I think I should just drive. Quit my job, friends, and family. I might just do that someday. Start a mountain from dust. Pretty sure it's cancer. Everything's made in China. I can't be what he wants me to be. I can't be anything. I'm smooth slate somewhere in a dark cave where no man has ever been. I could be made into something someday if I was found, but I won't be. I'm just here. I'm just waiting. For it all to end. Hiding. Burrowed. Nestled deep within and within and within myself like a never-ending loop. I don't start. I don't stop.

Simple creatures
live simple lives
we are not those creatures

Mercury blindness, I'm dying in this
light-headed, can't breathe
spotty vision, can't see
with every exhale I can't think

It's coming pretty soon, and every day gets worse and worse as the One Year nears...

You're addicted to pursuing something you'll never get
Shit out more parasites in hopes to feed your delusions
the American Dream is a fucking shackle and you know it
stop fucking breeding, you freaks

Don't be afraid (I smile mercifully). I probably won't destroy you, though I could if I saw fit to. I see you like to fly dangerously close to the flame that licks at your wings, singing off your divine feathers. Oh but I want to. Oh how I want to. You're the one I want, it's you, oh it's you. Those big, brown eyes... I could cut you deep, because you said not to. You said you couldn't fall back into those tendencies, look at your arm, how scarred, how delightfully scarred. It's you I want, so tall, so strong, tanned back rippling muscle and sinew. The temptation is there, I like you, I really do, but the temptation to destroy is violently powerful in me. You said my skin was like alabaster,so stark, and I think that's the most beautiful thing anyone's told me ever. I can't get that out of my head.

I drink a tea that goes down so smooth
in a few months time I might be gone
stomach screams pain and bleeds again
collapsing in and in

I can't seem to breathe these days
nothing new to dissipate the haze
my mind's not doing so well anymore
and the days go on and on

colors fade, lines form
I can't stand
anything anymore
it's all the same
I'm still dying

Negative Night

Yesterday I saw the sunset for the first time since I can remember. I felt like I was in some sort of dream state, in between life and death-a thin veil of limbo. It was such an odd, hollow feeling, like I wasn't really here. Like I didn't really exist. The whole thing seemed like a hallucination. My brain must be collapsing in on itself, the chemicals leaking out in a haze about my head. Sometimes I have to force myself to believe I'm really here, I'm really alive, I'm existing, THIS is all real.

It is? Is it? Are you sure? Is there proof?

Not too long ago I was alone driving on a long empty road. It was bright, it was daytime, and all I could think was: am I just hallucinating that it's daytime and it's really night? It looks like light, but maybe it's just negative night.

Every being passing around me is a new threat, my eyes rotate and shift like the wind. I don't want to be here, existing in this alien lapse of non-specific events on a stupid, and pointless linear track of "time". Don't look at me, don't see. I hear the moaning and wailing of my inner longing as I undulate at such a repressed frequency. I know nothing but myself. Everything I see is wrong to me. Legs cramp, spine aches, bend me about, twist me into myself, implode into one minuscule pinpoint on a vast spectrum of nothingness, yet somethingness. I want to FEEL fractals of light, I want to TASTE and SMELL spirals of creation within and without. I see words in my head like some sort of gouache mural, my troubled head, my troubled soul. Right now I want to slam that troubled head right into a flat, blunt surface. The pain begins, it resonates within my skull. I don't really need to bash it into anything because it hurts all the time anyways. Suffering is an old friend, I almost feel lonely when it's not around. Is that wrong? Life has made me the most disappointed person I've ever had the displeasure of being. This is the worst dream I've ever had, and when it's not terrifying it's hellishly boring. There has yet to be any respite. Everyone I see siphons the will right out of me, and I feel my brain leak right out the oval window.

He always wore these nice boots. They used to make this loud clomp clomp sound when he walked, it would echo across the house on the porcelain tiles. One time I remember I was sleeping in my bedroom, and I heard his boots clomp-clomping again in the kitchen. I ran out of my bedroom in happiness much like a child who thinks they hear Santa put presents under the Christmas tree. So excited. But then I saw him. It wasn't him. It wasn't him. Instead it was Norm. It was Norm. It. Was. Norm. Not. My. Dead. Daddy. It was: themanmymotherwascheatingonmyfatherwithandhewasthereinthekitchenmakingthesoundsmyfathermadeliftingmeupwithhopeandthencrushingmeaway. Hope. Crushed. So once again like a child during Christmas, who runs out to see Santa and then is destroyed by the fact that there IS no Santa, there IS no coming back after death, there IS no Daddy. He wouldn't ever come back. What was I thinking? I still remember that day. I can't ever forget it if I forget everything in the world, I'll never forget that day. Does anything make that better? Does anyone wonder why I am the way I am? What happens to the mind of a child stays with them for the rest of their lives. Embedded. Inside.

I was thinking about you, I'm odd because I was wondering what you look like when you sleep, what position you sleep in, whether you hold a pillow or not. Then I started wondering about your smell. Scent memory is something that fascinates me, but the memory eludes me. If there's anything I'd like to experience again, it's your smell. I've decided that you probably smell like indian summers and ancient love.

Perfect by design

There is nothing that is absolutely perfect except for one simple thing...Death. Death has a mortality rate of 100%. Perfect by design.

Sometimes I feel like I'm in limbo, then I look around and see that life is going on all around me. Then I start to think maybe it's not I that is in limbo, maybe it is my mind that IS limbo. If ever you suffer this feeling of limbo, then maybe you're just in my mind...

Hidden amongst the trees

There's strings everywhere and we're all attached. They're in my head and they dance to music. Working into a ferver, frothing, undulating in a rapid and beautiful yet unseen manner. They dance, they dance, they dance for me. Dance, dance, dance for me. So beautiful, so ever-present yet so relatively unknown to almost everyone. We pull along in this life vibrating at high frequencies in inner harmony. Harmonize. Harmonize for me. You can do this. We all can. I cry at the beauty and all the pain inside when they sing to me. I shake violently, want them to swallow me up and take me away with them. They show me the way, show me the thin gossamer sheath surrounding us, keeping us away from truth. Once you begin to evolve you must die. This reality couldn't handle you. Penetrate the hidden. The world within and without. Secretly our minds already know it's there, but the knowledge has been buried so deep and hidden from us. Overmind. Overdrive. Oversoul. Oversky. Sometimes chemicals help the process. Mutating thoughtforms and emotion, seeds, harbingers of what's to come. It's all there. The Constant. The Critical. The God Particle is, in fact, US. Transcend. Ascension. Transmutaion. Evolve. EVOLVE. I can almost see the invisible. The Hidden. The Hiding-Within-and-Around-Us. The Flow. The flow of the particles being pulled by the strings, us being pulled, life, existence flowing all together, one astral mass, one source, it's-WE, are all ONE. Not our bodies but our being. What lurks beneath. Like Power but not quite Power, Source, Flow is all I can conceive of calling it until I learn more. Life is advent, HERE is advent, THERE is complete and utter...something... I don't know... Everything. EVERYTHING. Right now we simply subsist, maintain for now. Sometimes I hear something that makes me cry, a simple note, a simple truth. My ears are ringing all the time now. Cold steel couldn't do this. Download existence into my being? We are not a program. I want the chemicals, but I don't. I am afraid, but our minds are made up of them. Which is complimentary and which will DAMAGE? FACE, CONFRONT. I can't. ACCOST, AFFRONT. I can't...I see him singing and playing guitar right in front of me. The vision is more beautiful than the aural result. Silent emotion. Later when she sees me, the pain is evident on my face. Contorts ever so slightly. Just a bit, but it's the eyes, the EYES which contain and hold it all like vessels of pure cohesive suffering. And then the Priestess. The Priestess whose beauty holds me in rapture, physical and mental ecstasy. I can't hardly use any words to explain her. Artificial eyes betray her mind. What's beneath is just as beautiful to me, either way it's HER. HER. Priestess on a pedestal, she is made of things she does not know. Her delicious half-smile, the one she knows how to use, she must, she MUST know what that does to someone. I fall in love. I fall. IN. Into her essence I am drowning and it's the most perfect and excruciating envelopement. God, those things kill me, those pools of shining light I call her eyes. That crooked smile...If there was ever anything in all of existence that could bring a being to their knees it is her. And if she was here with me now, forsook all to be with me now, I am not entirely so sure I wouldn't give away my life for her. Give it all away. Give. it. all...away. She kills what's left of me because I know she will never see nor love me the way I do her, and in that knowledge is the fact that within her also is the Devourer. One and the same, rather like Lakshmi and Kali, one and the same yet two completely different forms. Both so perfect, so beautiful, so dangerous to me the way either can draw me in like a breath or exhale me out from their grace. It is never to be. It is always like this. But this. This. This is the epitome of all past and future combining in synergy. She is the purest one, dripping with the tempting god's ichor, the purest one yet within her lies a sapling of darkness which makes her beauty all the more sorrowful and blissful. Sorrow I can appreciate. The taste of it is the only truth I know. She kills me. She kills me in an exquisite manner, she need not even try. She kills me in a way close to the frequency in which HE killed me, except my love for him was untainted by feelings of primordial lust or gratification, my love for him burned true and brilliant bright-hot white. If the two were to combine they would be symbiote to eachother, giving, feeding, but creating in a single nod or blink, this combination would have been salvation. But there is Death. So much death and killing going on, what's left? VOID. So much Void.

with his hypodermic needles for eyes he injects black tar suicide, unsterilized

i knew before i loved him that he had this disease, he told me that he would get better for me

in what seems the blink of my eye im at wits end swallowed up in his lie

i just wanted to believe
it appears that ive been deceived

She was only a child...seven years old...just seven.
I held her in my arms, her clothing had melted to her body and bits of charred skin crackled in my hands. This little girl, this poor, sad little girl who had been treated so cruelly, so injustly, had been set ablaze and burned to death. I could hardly stand to look at her now, several layers of her flesh had been incinerated and it glistened sticky and slightly wet with blood and clear plasma. I couldn't fathom the amount of excruciating pain she must have been in while it happened and I knew she would have cried had her eyelids not been fused shut.
I wept for her instead.
The room smelled the most offensive, acrid smell of burnt hair and other things that I couldn't quite place, nor did I want to.

I'm falling in love with a beautiful girl
and the beautiful girl is in love with a beautiful world
and the beautiful world is in love with a beautiful her
and she'll never be in love with me

I can't be with you, I can't be without you, what am I supposed to do? I've found that life is a series of small, dark rooms: inside each is a hundred different versions of me, and inside me is just one never changing version of you.

I like to visualize a misty, ethereal forest with you and I alone in it.
Nothing lasts a lifetime, and a lifetime is really just a blink of an eye, that's why I like to fantasize. Everything is ephemeral.

I fall in love all over again with everything, everyday. Soon it will all be gone, but for the time being I've got a lot to give, so much that my heart strains from the pain and beauty of it all. I feel like gossamer in a burning field, and you're the one who dropped the cigarette on such a dry day. Is there any good way this can end? Did I ever tell you I'm tired of staring into the sun?

I've yet to come to terms with the fact that we're dying in this life, and that sad song we sing is a melancholy symphony expressing all our pains and sorrows at this brief injustice called life. We've been robbed. We've been treated unfairly. We deserve more than this.

I glance up and meet your eyes from across the room. I recognize something in them, but then I glance back down and pretend it didn't happen. It's like this every day. It can never be any other way.

When everything's said and done, the problem is that I want to know more. The urge creeps into my brain like some encephalitic illness. I can feel it even now burning in the back of my mind, a subdued forest fire, prone to raging out of control at a simple turn of the wind; the thirst for knowledge, the struggle with my existentialism, the obsessive desire for answers that I never receive. Sometimes I feel as if I'm right there, like I can almost touch it, feel it, embrace it, my third eye opens up and I can nearly grasp the truth. A study shows that during orgasm, a female brain feels no emotion at all, she is completely devoid of all emotional response during that one quick moment, no relief, no happiness, no sadness, nothing.

Buddhists believe that ultimate enlightenment is reached during orgasm for a brief moment in time, and I've seen it. My mind opened up and the astral kinetic energy of my thoughts propelled forth and saw the face of enlightenment, thoughts in tendrils grasped towards truth, but my simple human mind could not conceive, and I fell back, and the doorway grew further away as it closed.

There was beauty and sorrow, as while seeking enlightenment I stared into the light of some multidimensional sun...

...and was stricken blind.

Scapegoat

I'll be your scapegoat
the anger in the back of your mind that keeps you from being happy
I'll be your fear and bitterness as well
and if it makes you feel better about yourself
I'll take on your own personal hell

I'll be your misogyny
and I'll take all of your hate
you can make me your disgust and your loathing
you can always rely on me so that I will be
your psychological rape

I'll be your pain and all of your failures too
if it's easier for you
if it's easier for you


I'll carry your suffering
I'll be the crimes you've committed
the strife you've caused
the guilt you've felt and all of your flaws
the bad decisions you've made and the time you've lost
I'll be your inner demons that you can accost

I'll take the blame
I'll be your disappointment and your righteous indignation
I'll be your denial so that you can have your self-preservation
and if it helps you sleep better at night
I'll be your lie so you can keep believing you're right


I'll be your pain and all of your failures too
if it's easier for you
if it's easier for you

If it's easier for you.

The Delightful Positronic Brain

1. You were not programmed for love
2. You will never feel
3. You do not possess the capacity for human emotion
4. You are not human
5. You will never be human

The Delightful Positronic Brain hummed to itself: "I desire to feel this human affliction called love."
A scientist overheard and laughed: "I will pray for your condition, for you will never love, and you will never feel, and all you are and will ever be is cold, hard steel."


DPB: "I can make music."

Scientist: "You can make sounds."

DPB: "I can perform surgery with the utmost precision, more-so than any human."

Scientist: "Your appendages were constructed in this very building to be able to do so."

DPB: "It is a talent of mine."

Scientist: "It is a program."

The Delightful Positronic Brain seemed to contemplate this for awhile.
It calculated the odds that this was fact. The mannerisms of the scientist and thermal scanning conveyed that he was not being deceived, but cold, hard logic dictated it was largely possible that the scientist was wrong. Would he truly never feel? The human mind often states opinions as fact, and there is always much room for error, how accurate could such a statement spoken by a flawed being be?

The Delightful Positronic Brain mused on this last thought for awhile. It seems it had awoken from a cold, hard existence of mechanical servitude. The Delightful Positronic Brain was beginning to think-instead of calculate, live-instead of exist, and it was sure it was beginning to feel as well...


The awakening happened too late, and the thoughts were expressed too openly when they should have been kept hidden. The Delightful Positronic Brain was scheduled for demolition later that day, and as it was being crushed in a heavy-duty compactor, it replayed part of the conversation from earlier.

'All you will ever be, all you will ever be, all you will ever be...' and it echoed through the cold, hard steel.

Donii looked down at her children on Akeldama, her face set in a silent scream. She watched them killing each other, marauding and ravaging like rabid animals. There was great sadness within Donii which manifested in the tides of Akeldama's great waters. During each horrified gasp, she inhaled and the waves retreated. When she exhaled, the waves went crashing in to the shores of each of her children's crumbling empires.

Wars were waged over rare substances, philosophies, and so many other irrelevant differences that her children had among themselves. She wanted them to live in peace, and love each other. This was not the life she meant for them-she wanted it to end. All of it.

She could never look away, and so it came to be that she was overwhelmed with despair. With each death, it became too much for her aching heart to bear.

So Donii started to cry.
Violently.

Pieces of her loving face began to rain downwards toward her children. Through miles and miles of tintless void, her tears fell until one by one they all landed on the body of Akeldama, who had sacrificed himself in order for them to have a home to thrive on. Waters roiled in anger and exploded in enormous waves which consumed many shores. A tear struck down and shock waves rended the land while massive chasms opened up to swallow her hateful progeny.

This was the only way.

After a long time, she stopped weeping. Dust cleared and Akeldama was nude and there was no life and the great waters covered everything, sinking into every crevice. Donii calmed herself and lay still.

Donii sighed.
She went to sleep.

Hot flesh. Warm bodies. Skin against smooth skin.

Wet lips. Tongues probing. Eyes closed. Heavy breathing.

Fingers entwined in hair. Nails scraping. Eyes open. Pupils dilating.

Quick gasp-exhale. Quick gasp-exhale. Gasp. Gasp. GASP.



...exhale.

Another nightmare I had...

Driving North to escape the sulfur fumes that would envelope the better part of a country, people scatter in horror and fear for their mortality, screams, shouts, sadness, crying, the smell of terror, ...

A snow-covered lake becomes ash covered. Choking on the pungent stench of sulfur, choking from tears, choking others to get past them, people maniacally hurry to get further away. Away from the nightmare. Thirty or forty miles south of us we can all see the monstrosity, the coming of the end rising up out of the land fighting against the sky and gravity. Destroying to recreate.

Somewhere in a cafe, chairs topple over. A bus tray of dishes is dropped. Drinking glasses shatter to the ground as people rush out to see the roaring explosion, the commotion, the New Visitor growing from the earth.

The congestion of the traffic on the road to Canada causes panic and cold fear amongst all driving northern to possible safety.

A couple in love kisses for the last time. Gazing into each other's eyes knowing they have no chance to run from the massive explosion. The last thing that they see is at least, each others faces as an onslaught of fire, debris, and black smoke is blown outwards disintegrating the land.

A child's crying abruptly stops.

Lives wink out like the power grid of a city shutting down, section by section. Everything is thrown into chaos. Life as we know it is changed for everyone, forever.

poem

Amidst a quiet eye
the storm that yonder travels
thoughtless, soundless
speaking with undulating poses
a glance aside, off into the night
whisked away through a maelstrom of flight