16

From the collection '8 poems about me and you.'

Are you good enough, strong enough, smart enough

and would you believe them if they told you you’re not?

The best of you is at large, they say.

You’re missing vast parts of yourself.

Once it was impossible 

to fill in your pieces, 

not crossing all of their lines.

Soon time fashions fools of us all.

Doubt is reliably ill-informed

via any number of charlatans 

whose fault is failing to see 

the world has passed them by

before the wisdom they have on offer –

false facts, faux figures, lost hopes and dreams –

is filtered through to you.

So you’ve felt for a while now 

(knowing this is nothing new)

you’ve been equipped to fail.

Fed all these off promises.

You’re under-prepared, 

you’re underdone,

your sources of knowledge 

as uncertain, unready 

as you hoped not to be.

Completion.

I find the most difficulty with writing is that I'm terrible at finishing anythi

Perfect.

Nine words is just right for an epigrammatic sentence.

Driven.

We are driven towards endings, as we are by lust, because we must know the shape of things. We need to feel and regard indistinct outlines in sharp relief.

Colour Plate.

Verdant.

Callum 34. Impossibly Ripely handsome. Art English teacher. Too kind, too sincere, popular, envied. (A bit of me??). Carl 32. Courier franchisee. Withered. Manipulative, sardonic, evil, scathing, mean, magnetic. (A bit of me??).
Karyn 28. Landscape gardener. Earthy beauty. Vulnerable, pleasant, introvert, considerate, damaged. (A bit of me??). 

The character outlines were framed with radiating pen strokes, like cartoon suns, which elevated them as somehow more vital. The inky lines gave the words a lustre, as neon tubes give to opaque signs. 

The story, set in Christchurch over one spring day and titled The Verdant City, would, the author planned, harvest meaning from fertile imagery – the garden as metaphor for life, where a sharp-nibbed pen prunes crowded sentences and light promotes truth.

At any moment you’ll be discovered and planted deeply into the bitter truth of this place. Who would say that? The author didn’t allocate the line to a character, and she was undecided whether or not to include it; in case critics pounce upon it as autobiographical; for fear this new sphere I inhabit named ‘recent divorcee’ stains every page, faintly but indelibly like a watermark. Every fiction must embrace unavoidable elements of fact.

The story was ready to be written...

Distant.

She takes a distant and forced interest in other people's lives while remaining immune to fresh experience. She doesn't want to be part of a team, but doesn't want the rest of her team to know this.

Actinic word sequence.

Penchant.

He frequents cocktail bars and has a penchant for women of scant virtue who laugh at him and tell him he is repulsive. Some people have a large circle of enemies; some have only friends they dislike. He doesn't even have that, is alone.

Truly.

(Insert non sequitur), nonetheless (insert a further non sequitur).

Pseudohaiku for you.

Haikus are simple; but
some they lack the sense,
cumulus clouds.

Plasma.

The correlation between the origin of an objective universe and the phenomenal world may or may not be naïve realism. Huge filamentary currents sweeping through a protogalactic nebula pinched plasma into the building materials of the sun and stars. Heisenberg probably knows; he might have been there.

Sibilance.

Extract from 'Bed. Time. Story.'

A plane throbs in the distance many miles above. Long past now. Fifth form science says so. Sound waves dispersing more slowly than light waves. His penis shrinks away from the space in his fingers. 

This silent sibilant speech, he thinks. All these ‘esses’, they make him want to piss. It’s like onomatopoeia of the mind. He really should write that down. What day is it? Tuesday. Need to get a warrant for the car he resolves. The car.

***

Long drives on tarseal roads. The engine hums vibrations through soft seats and Julie babbles excitedly about her first family holiday. Tearing past sports grounds and small towns and tussock paddocks full of sheep and cows and, if the fences give it away, deer, even though he never sees the deer. They don’t like standing near the road, maybe. 

Grey.

I recognize nothing about us anymore. We require reprogramming. Cognitive incongruity, flawed philosophy, neurotic pseudoneuroscience and the weak links of linguistic determinism corrupt our software. The failed hardwiring of the grey cells instruct us not in ones and zeros but in couplets and triplets, in black and white, in the cold sharp light of painful memory.

Be.

We sampled the future
in echoes of the past,
made is were
before are even was.

Reasonable.

He did a wonderful impersonation of a reasonable man.

Actinic word sequence.

Think.

I often think therefore I frequently am.

Foible.

Do the flaws and failures of those in whom I place trust (they having asked for it) more clearly exhibit their or my own foibles? We want those who purport to be authorities, advisors, friends, to not be hopeless underneath it all; and especially not to leech hypocrisy through a regretfully thin veneer.

Julie.

Alistair, who once won advertising awards and is now constantly anxious, ducks around the corner to smoke a large bowl of crack. Sweating, he returns to his spot on Queen Street and delivers his speech for the 100th time that day. He eyeballs people going about their business. “Our time is up. Do you know who I used to be?” He spits menacingly at all who would avoid his gaze. He used to be the small boy who’d fall asleep with his head on his sister’s lap, he remembers. But Julie was taken away somewhere because dad molested her and Alistair hasn’t seen either of them since.

Drown.

As he lost the ability to concentrate at length, his brain attempted to imbibe information while his spirit drowned in it.

Behaved.

He was unsure if he suffered from Whorfianism (he'd never heard it said); nevertheless he behaved as if he thought he did.

Sentence.

Ventured.

'Nothing ventured, nothing gained', some people liked to say. However, he was at a stage in life where the things he wouldn't get around to doing outnumbered the things he intended to do. He ought to feel unfulfilled. Instead, he feels himself pleasantly unburdened. Nothing ventured, nothing strained.

Ability.

Her ability to self-sabotge was limited only by her lack of confidence that she would do it properly.

Decree.

I don't have delusions of grandeur, she decreed, I have the blueprint for grandeur.

Wrong.

I find you witty, kind, attractive and intelligent, but on all matters regarding what constitutes exemplary writing, wrong, she said to her soon to be ex-publisher.

Asemic continuum.

Prepare.

Walking past a history of mirrors reflecting more than we can see, I check myself (before you wreck my Self); nothing's in place. I look harder and see my hair is ok, my skin is ok, my eyes are not ok so I look down and see my centre is ok and move on. I prepare as best I can for something for which I can never be truly prepared.

Puppets.

Consider the development of philosophical thinking, particularly in humans, and illustrate its significance through the use of shadow puppets. Compare this to other kinds of thinking in other species, contrasting the advancement of dugongs with that of giraffes.

Why.

Why? The cursor winked back at Reece.
Reset. Respect. Rescind. Rhesus.
Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?
Why did the chicken cross the road? 
Why try different writing styles to find a voice?


Jacques Derrida: Any number of contending discourses may be discovered within the act of the chicken crossing the road, and each interpretation is equally valid as the authorial intent can never be discerned, because structuralism is DEAD, DAMMIT, DEAD!


Ernest Hemingway: To die. In the rain.


Why? The cursor continued to wink at Reece.
Why would I?
Why what where...?
Why had he questioned her?
Why the long face?
Why all the fuss?
Why me?
Why not?


He'd always had an issue with the biology of the birth. Out of his mother's (his mother's!) vagina. And what sort of conception was it? Dad never offered him this information as a tease, and he didn't ask. Reece would wait until his own son turned 21 and then drop it on him in the speech. "You were concieved during a root of epic proportions. I was off my tree and your mother barely hanging from the branches of hers. It was the morning after a night of clubbing... my sperm must've been tied in knots. No idea how they swam the canal. Ha! Classic!" And then his boy would scull his yard glass. If he had a daughter he'd obviously change it up a little. Oh dear, a daughter. Complex and delicate creatures (females!) the likes of whom he'd barley learned to interact with even at his advanced age.

Actinic word sequence.

Verity.

She had tried to discuss this with her husband, but he waved the conversation aside in his wet non-confrontational way. He was disbelieving that there could be any problems in the Maven household, and flippantly passed a remark ‘at least we know Verity’s not on drugs or hanging with the wrong crowd... she doesn’t seem to have any friends these days!’ And he nervously laughed, realising that not only had he betrayed his daughter, he had neither the integrity nor inner strength to fix it. Underneath the family ideal lay something awkward from which he shied. As far as he was concerned it was a mother-daughter thing... Now if they’d had a boy... then.... he pictured himself passing a rugby ball between father and son and sorting out all the kid’s issues on a Saturday afternoon. Teenage girls were intricate and delicate and... he shuddered.

The timer buzzed on the stove and the thought disappeared with the steam rising from the saucepan of peas on the boil.

Poem.

From the collection '8 poems about me and you.'

9

Back then, if you wanted to, you were going to...

and... or become...

You could easily have... 

or... if you'd preferred.

Not so long ago, you could... or.... or... and... 

if you so desired.

You were even...

if you'd chosen to.

You were to be... or... or... and...

If.

Less than a lifetime ago,

you could do anything you wanted it seemed, 

except retain the ability to see infinite potential in yourself.

Venn diagram.

Manifest.

Don't let your illness manifest itself in startling confessions via public notices.

Asemic continuum.

Sequential.

The Fibonacci Ellipsis . .. ... ..... ........ ............. ..................... ..................................

Distance.

The most effective measure for dealing with difficult people is distance, he whispered reclusively to nobody.

That.

That that is is that that is not is not that that is that that is is not true is not true, he said with lexical ambiguity. And he meant it.

Framed excerpt.

Venn diagram.

Unknown.

"An idea unknown in the state of nature must be a human invention," Kelly offered strongly to the audience. Feet shuffled uncomfortably under seats and there were one or two coughs that sounded like they were filling silence for the sake of it. Distressed, she looked down at the page and realised she had transposed the notes for her film script with her catholic Aunt's eulogy. She glanced sideways and noticed the priest's face had reddened, a distinctly unchristian countenance pushing aside his usually pious expression.

Holiday.

...long drives on tarseal roads. The engine hums vibrations through soft seats and Julie, his younger sister, babbles excitedly about her first family holiday. Tearing past sports grounds and small towns and tussock paddocks full of sheep and cows and, if the fences give it away, deer, even though he never sees the deer. They don’t like standing near the road, maybe. The beach, the beach! Julie yells. A second person is in the front now. Two shadowy figures. One driving – must be dad, and one sleeping – must be mum; but they change like smoke into shapes of teachers and priests and friends and strangers, and it doesn’t really matter who they are. The car suddenly swerves across the centre line on a collision course with another. The nebulous driver smiles... 

Actinic word sequence.

Poem.

Spurious Meta Facts

Each second future reality advances on us

pushes aside fiction and settles in place.

Our minds are prismatic; infinitely sided.

Multiplying the reflections of 

silent thoughts 

sonorant words 

and spurious meta facts.

Consider the development of philosophical thinking –

Illustrate its significance through the use of shadow puppets. 

Compare this with other kinds of thinking in other species. 

Contrast the advancement of humans with that of viruses.

Fabricated organisms evolve from murkiness: 

light shines into other-worldly corners.

Tumbleweeds of matted hair and dust 

trap salacious episodes of history.

Colour Plate.

Present.

The seats of the car smell like the promise of childhood. During those early endless summers he can’t remember it crossing his mind that he would like to be a father. Now it is such a responsibility. It daunts him daily. He wonders if his father thought about the things he does now. If so, he never let on. Simon remembers John always just getting on with life. No soul searching or crises of confidence. He recalls once reading a pejorative reference as to how an idle life can too easily descend into the existential and the metaphysical. He sees those philosophies as an ascension, a positive. But if that’s true, he puzzles, why does abstract consideration of past and future render the present terrifying?

Asemic continuum.

Poem.

From the collection '8 poems about me and you'.

0

I embraced mitosis from an early age

surely to be the death of me;

cascading cells of coded future,

misspells my life: G, T, A, C.

A death professed on line 13

until such point perfection; then

as certain as it was random,

a frail, flawed, faulty gene.

What hope to live and love and laugh

when the elements which conspire

to steal my fragile existence are 

not water, earth, nor wind, nor fire

but abstruse elements of chance and luck?

Pre-determined by evolution:

the science of obscure abstraction

concludes free will is chemical fiction.

With future knowledge of what will pass

there's one present choice that's still my own:

suffer the truth – its time its place;

or to not carry on?

Strife.

Duncan's life seems to tangle with other’s lives, and it feels like this means his death will too. The nexus of friends and family, the strife and drama they visit upon him, will eventually bind and strangle him. Of that he is convinced. He oscillates between acquiescence that these tiny threads of the universe are connections to be celebrated, and the suffocation he experiences from his proximity to humanity. Are others oblivious to the stresses they impose, or do they thrive upon crisis to counter the fear of ordinariness? He just wants to be alone. Sal, Brad the cat and he. Sometimes. Not forever. Mostly. 

Actinic word sequence.

Significant.

Nothing's significant but everything's matter.

Pseudohaiku for you.

There is no hope
and no despair;
I'm nothing if not a nihilist.

Names.

Authors do not give characters names. The character's parents name them. An author should know their character's parents intimately. It also helps if they know the grandparents, but sometimes this is not possible due to whatever reason an author decides to invent. Some authors choose not to know the parents of a character before assigning their name, again for whatever reason they decide to invent. They can do whatever they like actually. That is the beauty of omnipotence.

Venn diagram.

Traderighted.

She stood and stared, stiffly wide-eyed. I'd just suggested that imagination relies on knowledge of generic convention. 
"If an author is not careful," she added unhelpfully, "their innate intertextuality will consume every original thought they've ever had. They may become a writer who 'lards their leane booke with the fat of others' workes.'" 
"I might, I might," I concurred, refocussing the conversation from authors onto me (as I'd intended from the beginning of this discussion) "In fact, plagiarising others in my attempt to draw attention to the effort I make not to plagiarise, is arguably a worse wrong." 
"Be honest about it then," she said. "Draw attention to all its instances and then none can accuse: Anonymous Author, they are the words of another."
"But so much has been written over the years by spurious imitators and attributed to me, that despite the fact there is only one Anonymous Author, there happens to be a little bit of Anonymous Author in all of us," I claimed, quite possibly inaccurately, at the very least lacking evidence to support the assertion. I was excited now. I carelessly plucked words from the air and combined them in ways that may or may not mimic language that had occurred before these implausibly original sentences were written. Thrilled with the idea of forbidden facsimiles and wrongful copyright I decided to let them lie on the page where they fell, unique or not. TM ©*


*This piece of intellectual property can be neither trademarked nor copyrighted as it has been plagiarised. TM ©

Ambition.

Quite ordinary circumstances most people take for granted, such as the notion that fractal geometry is intrinsically linked to matter and sensation, regardless of what Plato had to say, and that there are phenomena which exist outside of one dimensional space but in somewhat less than two dimensions, are puzzling to me. 

I become overwhelmed with the ambition to find something supremely unimportant to do.

Asemic continuum.

Inertia.

Time has no cause for nostalgia; time is what people are not: reliable, efficient, accurate and ceaselessly progressive. People stuck in the past are the loneliest people. His superior, a heavily oiled fat man, was such a person. Noisily opinionated and in possession of the grotesque habit of clearing and swallowing a throat full of catarrh prior to interrupting conversation, he often wondered aloud that time and opportunity had passed him by. It instilled a distinct lack of confidence in those unfortunate enough to work for him. The man's ability to make good decisions in the future was apparently as lacking as his alertness to the passage of time as it raced by his inertness.

Flaw.

Everyone is flawed. If your flaws do not affect anyone else then you are living well.

Vignette.

Anthony placed one leg on the railing and leaned forward so that it took all his weight. His crotch became elongated and he held this seam-bursting pose with the permanence of a bronze sculpture. "It must be disheartening for you to be a writer with nothing to say" he said. Zoe winced and turned splendidly florid. "It's not that I've got nothing to say," she said, "I have. I was once a future writer and now I'm the nemesis of current living writers – I'm the former future author of the great literary vignette." She laughed and stared at his tight pants and the ridiculous position in which he'd cast himself. "You can't do anything these days without someone thinking you're a creep, can you Anthony?"

Actinic word sequence.

Blame.

Blame requires a resting place. Far away from where our blameless lives play out. We fuss around allocating it a town, a home, a bed in which it can settle. Nobody likes to see blame aimlessly wandering, peering around corners and through windows into our lives. We don't want it brushing against us as it drifts by. We prefer it to be still. Silent and inert so we can measure our own distance from it and how close others are to where it collapses. Then we're able to give it a wide berth. Blame, we say, belongs somewhere else.

Colour Plate.

Time.

At our annual meeting concerning year end accounts, Simon would allow me glimpses of his obvious frustration. It was as if a year's worth of numbers and columns and bottom lines had exhausted him of the ability to maintain a charade; that over the seasons of calculating profit and loss, all the while with bigger questions racing about his head, he'd decided to just come out with it.

Every year, without fail, he'd tip back on his cowhide executive chair. Tilting his head towards the ceiling, looking for answers in the light dancing on his closed eyelids, he'd question me on a recurring theme:

"Why do we experience things now but only remember the past? What is the present, and what is the process of metamorphosis that causes this shift from a stream of experience to memory of experience? What is experience and what is memory? Is time the absolute that governs all aspects of the physical and the intellectual?"

Then, leaning forward across the wide kauri desk, first blinking and then staring at me as if I had the answers, he'd sigh and slump his shoulders before apologising and returning to the figures on the spreadsheet in front of him.  

I believe that he truly believed that I had the answers. He was fascinated that I was comfortable with the living I made as an existentialist literary voice suffering from an identity crisis. Fascinated yet perplexed. He struggled internally with the idea, and then expressed it every year on March 31. As if by stumping me with metaphysical conundrums I'd see the error of my woolly-headed ways, eventually committing to a career that involved fixed income and projected dividends. As if my tax return was a personal affront to his entire world view. 

I saw the young me in him. Sadly, he was twice my age.

Commute.

the footsteps of the wind

approach at altitude

signal their arrival

these plastic bags in trees

announcing their intent

the needles in the breeze

poke holes in the gaps in the silence

which melts into

the grey white noise

of tarseal pressing tired flesh

and then it stops

and starts again

and leaves me thinking

of whether this is good and great

or can never be that way

this weary sense of now and forever.

Notes.

The notebook’s beige cover accentuated its bright red logo. The pages offered advice from a dazzling array of literary lights: The best stories are the ones worth writing; every story needs an Iago. Aphorisms were highlighted in the margins. Writerly wisdom concerning style and tone traced indentations through the white leaves and ingredients with which to concoct literary alchemy glowed on the pages. Say what you mean... just write... deadline three weeks, vivid red ink formally warned. Time pressure’s good... book the baby sitter... cancel coffee group, dreary black felt-tip casually prescribed. Problem solved. 


There would be plenty of time to focus in the precious spaces between life. This will be a brilliant story. The story deserved to be written. It would be a story that inspires and explains – a story worth passing on.


Yet plot, characters and theme, voice, tone and language, poetic prose pared to lean syntax, the satisfied sigh of the last line, the simple beauty of the story to grow within the reader, revealing parts of itself days later, remain scattered like seeds in this private notebook. What prevents me from gifting this story to readers? Am I afraid to expose my words, or am I afraid these words will expose me? Am I alone in this fear? Ends.


The story has not been written.

Actinic word sequence.

Pity.

His absence remained with her like the chill of a room too large to warm. A dread descended, silver-cold; shadows lingered and caressed; drew knowing looks from unknown guests; pity, pity the dispossessed. She plunged into a lake of ice, her broken mind at last at rest.

Rather.

Think of all the reasons you'd rather not be me and that's why I'd rather be you.

Plainly.

He fanatically believed that men of words were weasels; that they were anything but men of their word; that they wove deeper meaning into plain talk to camouflage their intent, to advance their causes; that they relegated the less loquacious to silent insignificance. Unfortunately he'd confused writers with rhetoricians. But then, he'd say that me saying that plainly proves his point.

Asemic continuum.

Potential.

A car strobed red through the trees in the distance. Plastic bags cart-wheeled in a spiral of white noise in its wake. The afternoon was hot. I lay prone on the concrete which warmed my front while the sun browned my back. I closed my eyes and was anywhere. A cocoon. Fiji. Her bed. The concrete softened beneath me with each rise and fall of breath, drawing me into its porous surface. The weight of summer air pressed gently from above. Air, flesh and concrete became one and I drifted into a blurry sleep. 10 minutes earlier I'd been diving into Richard's pool. His sister was likely still there judging by the yells from over the fence. The water had chilled as the sun pushed shadows ahead of itself into walls and over fences onto the pool's surface, so I'd come onto the street to sunbathe and warm-up. I heard Simone squeal and then an uneven splash. I imagined her limbs flailing wildly to break her fall, and the water enveloping her, maybe peeling her bikini top down a little. I loved her limbs. I'd written poetry about them. Bad poems with the best intentions. Isn't that what schoolboys did when they discovered a girl's limbs had power over them? Didn't they concoct private and persuasive expressions of their admiration? I hoped so. Simone had limbs of note, and other things besides. The reason I was out here on the street, face down on the concrete, was because this is where she had lain yesterday. I was filling in the memory of her lithe outline. The glow of the world around me became brighter. I felt like peeing in my togs and almost purred in my half-sleep when I was startled by cold splashes of water bouncing onto the back of my neck. I tilted my head up to see Simone bending over me, silhouetted against the jewel-blue sky. You alright? She asked. We were wondering where you'd got to. Yep, fine. I replied in a monotone attempt to disguise the thrill of peering into her shape. Come on, she said and held out long arms to pull me up. I refused her offer desperately willing the bulge in my togs to subside. I was being mocked by my body. It was offering the chance of holding her hands or embarrassing myself. I stayed rooted to the ground. Suit yourself, she said, and I couldn't make out her expression against the clarity of the blue behind her. I'm off to make a soda-stream. Come and join us when you're ready. I wondered if she knew. She must've known. How could anyone not know? I flushed red. Ok, I need to dry out a bit more that's all, I mumbled. Ok. See you. She turned and skip-ran for a few steps. The sinew of her hamstrings rippled tightly as she slowed to a saunter. She turned into the gate and with a probing finger pinged the elastic of her bikini bottoms underneath her bum. She glanced back at me smiled. She knew what I knew that she knew. The look she gave me was as if I had changed shape while I was lying there on the footpath, and she was trying to remember how I used to appear. As soon as I could, I got up and followed. The trees revealed themselves in bright swathes along the grass verge. The rough concrete had left shallow indentations across my chest and stomach. I looked over my shoulder and saw the dark shape of my wet outline shrinking in the heat. It was evaporating and merging with Simone's vapour from yesterday. The summer had barely begun and the mix of anxious potential it was cooking already made me sick with happiness. I broke into a canter and dashed up the front steps to Richard's and Simone's parent's place. I was anywhere. Anything might happen. Life moved unstoppably forward. There seemed no purpose to it. It needed none. It was good. It just was. How quickly things change.

Anonymous Author TV.

Tomorrow.

We piece together fragments of memory to create a concept of what the future might be. For someone with amnesia or no memory development, the implications are bleak. Mental time travel is unique to humans. Being trapped in the present may not sound terrible but planning a future is inherent to our happiness. Why do we care about tomorrows? Because we can remember yesterdays.

Conception.

Half of me recalls taking out an unusually shaped sperm with a flick of my flagellum. It had advanced quickly in my slipstream and was preparing to overtake me. The fertile egg was in sight. I contracted and expanded like a super-sonic accordion and lunged head-first into the spongy wall of the ovum. 

***

The other half of me remembers being attacked by a white tick-like creature which buried its head deep into my body, batting away others of its kind with a powerful tail. After that it's something of a blur. I became single minded in my purpose to divide; I thoroughly embraced mitosis. Ironically, single-mindedness is a leading cause of schizophrenia. 

Venn diagram.

Black.

It was rain-dark. Silverbeet coloured trees which were neither silver nor red shrouded the slick roads. He walked too fast, bouncing off strangers. Mist permeated their angry, sibilant voices with coldness and the white noise of tires on wet asphalt became ugly. He would have welcomed the punch in the face – it was the threat of the punch that caused more damage. Peering back every few steps, through the inkiness, he felt sick. We want to see the colour of your fear, they'd told him. Well, this was it; a boy tearing through blackness, all his light absorbed.

Eureka.

Which reminds me, I must come up with a memorable opening line.

Ritual.

She grinned like she had the pleasure of a secret. Lovely to see you. He pecked her lightly on the cheek and felt the suede warmth of her flesh. Closing his eyes and pressing his lips a little firmer, surprised with the elevating pleasure of the exchange, he inhaled and was mildly perturbed to discover the scent she wore – or had worn today – was the same fragrance his daughter favoured. But she must be three times her age? He kissed her face harder still, confused, put off his stride. His lips widened just enough for his tongue to emerge and faintly taste skin and perfume mingling with a mysterious womanly concoction of powders and creams. She stiffened; her grin waned. He looked away and mumbled a weak apology, his mouth dry with embarrassment. The moment had become horribly awkward, as social rituals do if you repeat them often enough. 

Light.

I've emerged from Plato's cave to view truth in light and shadow and reflection. My mind has been coaxed and trained from obscurity, like an eye illuminated with the brightness of reality. I seek warped watery images; impressions of forms too dazzling, too profound, to examine in ordinary light.

Mispoken.

When the first human spoke the first word how did the speaker know what he or she meant, and how did the listener understand how to interpret the utterance? Answers on the back of a holographic postcard to: 
"WTF are you saying?" Apt 13, 10010110 State Highway 1, Auckland. 
Attn: Anonymous Author.

Earnest.

In life, not everything is relevant; in literature, this is not so. His creative paralysis stemmed from the pressure to emulate prior barely comprehensible eruptions of earnestness. Deliberate obfuscation intensified despite his unnerving emotional clarity.

Lazy.

If I was as lazy with my writing as you are with your speech idt b dixwlt s udersnda w((woz drtyinf to?say doo uou/.

Difficult.

He was difficult to be around but I enjoyed spending time with him. It meant I was not the most offensive person in the room.

Actinic word sequence.

Phantoms.

In belief of certain types the will must be passive and the intellect suspended, a realm of phantoms entered. Some regard wishful thinking as a valid scientific method until there is evidence to suggest contrary.

Made.

I'm going to let them know all about it. That I know what they get up to. They do this sort of thing now, I said. And I shouldn't have said it. It's none of my or her business what they do and I'm one to talk anyway. From behind the windows darkness creeps across the lawn and into my eyes. All I want is my bed. The earth is turning faster than it should, while an insistent ringing grows louder. Can you hear it? No, she said. It hurts, I said. It looks like it, she said. I collapsed and vomited onto the threadbare carpet, grazing my cheek. That felt good. Warm and painful. I remember being punched really hard in the stomach as a child and how good it felt once the pain became hot, after the initial cold slicing of dullness through flesh. So heavy and numbing you're not sure if you will even survive it. Looking up at her I started to cry and rolled onto my back choking tears and thick liquid into the air. Look at me. I screamed. Look at what they've made me. Not them, she said. You. Look what you've made yourself.

Ice.

I knew a popular boy who in adulthood was sentenced to a life of loneliness. People who had liked him concluded that pagophagia was really the only thing that made him cool. Like the successful treatment of an obscure disease, he was miraculously cured of his friends.

Saturday.

He whipped the curtains apart. This is what daytime looks like, he shouted as he kicked the pile of my clothes on the floor. But you'd have forgotten, it's been so long. He stormed out and I heard him slam the front door, his heavy steps across the driveway crunching the gravel. Then the car door slammed and the motor started roughly. As the engine revved out of earshot down the street I rolled over and pulled the covers over my head and farted.

Asemic continuum.

Walk.

Nellie was melancholy about how often during her life she had been on long solitary walks such as this.

Autological.

She feels the contours of the word with her tongue, tracing its outline. It is smooth, oval like a river stone and tastes poisonous. The sensation fills her mouth and slides down her throat into the cavity where she creates feelings of love and hate and fear. She trembles like a bee with wet wings drawn towards absence and evolves the courage to say the word out loud. "Hippopotomonstrosesquipedalian," she announces.