The Aegir Ridge

I am prisoner to humanity's most creatively crippled monuments. Rotten parts and crossbeams whose only pulse is the steady thrum of termites and the gelatinous fear of movement.

Every time we build this barn, we have to watch it fall apart.

The families of cockroaches and cows surviving inside don't even bother filing out; they'll survive the fallout, and we'll be dumb enough to still cook and eat their flesh. The roaches won't even touch us without cleaning themselves.

Our parents smile again as we erect these pillars, the local priest and all his parish will pat us gratefully on our backs again.

"Ya done good, kid. Ya put your daddy's place back in order."
I grimace and can't wait to watch it burn.

There's a thousand different endings. Outside, the wind still whips; I watch the mercury crack and slide slowly out the bottom, pooling in mock disgust and laughing at my naivete. I don't know what to make of it anymore.

"What's so wrong with glasses?"
"Nothing. Unless they know you're coming."
Werewolves and shapeshifters--some call it paranoia. I know they're all after me. They look just like my bro. Their fangs seem to smile even in their sleep. They're tossing and turning on my borrowed couch. I know it's coming.

What in the hell are they waiting for?

We pry open car doors. My friends don't bother locking theirs. The vehicle lurches into the night. I should feel gravity giving up as we're climbing through the timberline. It's a bumpy ride. And the lead that replaced my lungs and stomach slips deeper down inside me.

"This is where we lose reception," he says, pointing to the display on his cell phone. My other friend nods in acknowledgement. The driver presses on, and I feel the world slur drunkenly. The car seems to vomit and barrel roll through the night.

"Remember the last time we were here?" I ask. Quizzical stares. "What? It was the same as now. We were running for our lives then, too."
"You feeling okay?"
"I don't know how you can be so fucking flippant about this."
If we could jump right over the river, ignore the coming crevasse and float right on...We'd float downstream. Would our souls wash ashore? Would the local police know how to identify them, strap tags onto our dreams, ambitions, and best intentions?

I realize what's been eating at me when every dream is nothing but a metaphor for descent.

The driver turns the dial; the music is more brooding. It's louder than before, and I have no choice but to settle further back into the leather and hope this drive will be different from the last. I can already see us at the end crawling out of the car, scrambling for something still.

And where the fuck did I lose the last five years?

This mountain grows deeper every year. I sleep in the wake of its shadow. And my body is the divide.

Samsara

And calmer than the face of a woman telling lies I watched the way you were transmogrified.

"For the greater good," they said.

I look around and all I see is Eliot's Waste Land. I look around and wonder how we even have convictions anymore.

"Is it feedback you're looking for? You're fucking up."

Thanks, brother.

The soiled napkins, the excuses for progeny in which we spilled our seed, float downstream.

Have we sinned against God and Nature? Against ourselves?

Fishing in the black hole, where a moon ago we drowned, where a moon ago we borrowed every semblance of suicide, what can we expect to keep?

Oh, God, why did this ever have to happen to me? You know you mean everything to me. And you could never be a mistake, your will could never be policed.

Apollo's existence is a fallacy. But science proved that long ago. Heliocentrism and all of that.

Helios drives the chariot; I watch the sky.
Daedalus demands; I abide.

"But, son, please keep a steady wing. And know you're the only one that means anything to me. Steer clear of the sun, or you'll find yourself in the sea."

The promise of release, safety, your grandfather dreams. Somewhere between abomination and his only progeny.

I fell flat and prayed to the gods of yesteryear. I fell flat and prayed on a kitchen floor soiled from years of grease and childish grief. Do the stains of my tears reach you still? I'll just let your silence speak.

Don't forget my name. Don't forget to tell them I believed. Even if I couldn't be the one who held you in my arms.

"But I've got a plan and some wax and some string; some feathers I stole from the birds. We leap from the cliff and we hear the wind sing a song that's too perfect for words."

I hope you were smiling, I hope you were crying, I hope you felt it all. In that second with your mother, the one who wouldn't have me, I hope you had it all.

Don't lose yourself in the throes of the sea.

Chaucer Rocks My Emo Socks

"But thanne felte this Troilus swich wo
That he was wel neigh wood; for ay his drede
Was this, that she som wight hadde loved so,
That nevere of hym she wolde han taken hede,
For which hym thoughte he felte his herte blede"

~Chaucer - Troilus and Criseyde bk. 1, lines 498-502

"I'm cuddling close
To blankets and sheets
But you're not alone, and you're not discreet
Make sure I know who's taking you home."

~Dashboard Confessional - "Screaming Infidelities"



"Thise wordes, and ful many an other to,
He spak, and called evere in his compleynte
Hire name, for to tellen hire his wo,
Til neigh that he in salte teres dreynte.
Al was for nought: she herde nat his pleynte;
And whan that he bythought on that folie,
A thousand fold his wo gan multiplie."

~Chaucer - Troilus and Criseyde bk. 1, lines 540-546

"Wandering this house
like I've never wanted out
and this is about as social as I get now.
And I'm throwing away the letters that I am writing you
'cause they would never do,
I would never do, never."

~Dashboard Confessional - "Saints and Sailors"


And you thought those emo boys were annoying. No, no, no, they weren't the first.

God, I hate Chaucer.