Mental Meanderings

Typewriter Series #2663 by Tyler Knott Gregson

After all this time spent sober, what a drug, what an intoxicating overwhelming comforting drug,

to be finally understood.

Typewriter Series #2662 by Tyler Knott Gregson

You’re going to be buried down, hidden away and wrapped in darkness, they’ll crucify you and laugh at the mention of resurrection.  

We all will know the cave, the silent and forgotten, we all will know betrayal.  

Some fall in love with the tomb, some break their arms trying to roll the stone away.

Typewriter Series #2661 by Tyler Knott Gregson

We call them out, noticing eyes though they cloud with tears, the winged and floating as we look heavenward maybe for answers, maybe for peace.

My mother’s father became a hawk, my father’s father grew monarch wings, we find them still, greet them as old friends, follow them with gentle eyes.  

Grief can be transformed, only they don’t tell you that.

I wonder, daily, how many butterflies and birds are flying around Carrying the names Of all those we lost.

Typewriter Series #2660 by Tyler Knott Gregson

Spine like zipper teeth, keeping it all from spilling out,

I’m outgrowing this skin.

What left but to pull down a tooth at a time,

and let leak out every single explosion of light

I stuffed tightly inside.

Typewriter Series #2658 by Tyler Knott Gregson

Night tips into day, moments later I find you. I knew then, truth told, immediate and exactly, your lips and my lips and some unfolding of the years to come, origami in reverse, really.  

They say love is an ocean, cliche repeated over years and ink, volumes thick with proof of it, but what they don’t say is true love is the calming of that sea, the stillness after a storm passes, the churning made mirror smooth, the sky reflecting back, dark clouds fading off into a horizon line.

Night tips into day, light streaks into the far off, last glimmers of the hours we shared and we stood, still as stone, solid as the promises we made.

Typewriter Series #2657 by Tyler Knott Gregson

I wish for backwards, ferociously I wish for it, a rewind of time, a finger on the hour hand spinning further and further, the number in the date window of some watch counting down then starting over as the month backpedals, as the years fall away. I wish for backwards, on and on until buildings are un-built, a story at a time, railroad tracks lift like stitches removed from the wounds we caused.  I want to see contrails wisp away like they were only clouds, I want to hear silence where highways once rumbled, I want to rise up and see how rivers knew the way to the sea before we knew to build dams to stop them. One by one I wish for the extinguishing of electric light, like magic called out before Tesla fought a desperate war for which current we’d choose.  Like candles blown out, I want to see the darkness reclaim itself, watch the stars grow confident once again, burning like they knew to burn, like they still burn, only we cannot find them in the orange haze of our progress.   Feverishly, I ask each night for the brave call of retreat, for a cinematic reversal of all that’s come, sped up for brevity sake, I ask for us all, fumbling fools in the dark, looking for a sliver of light to share, fresh, flawed but hopeful, waiting for a single spark to warm us in the night.

Typewriter Series #2656 by Tyler Knott Gregson

My courage wasn’t liquid, it was fire forged and steel in the center of me. I said I loved you and left it there, anyone who knew anything could find it, but it was yours, and so I left it.

Funny the things we walk around, step over and forget to pick up. Funny how they become part of the landscape, camouflaged into our routine.

I love you left like laundry to be carried up some set of stairs, folded, and ready to be worn when the weather, when the temperature was just right.

Typewriter Series #2654 by Tyler Knott Gregson

Imagine myself a droplet of water, imagine my excitement as I fall from the shower head and see my destination. Aim for your hair, I would, the soft landing in the soaking smoke and curl, but I wouldn’t linger, there’s more to explore after all.  

Down your face next, pausing on eyelids, on the side of your nose, then resting awhile on your lips. I search for heartbeats here, feel the sphere of me tremble and forget to ask questions of the surface tension that holds me together.  

Lips to throat, vibrating from your breath, then over the hillsides of your breasts, beyond the last expanse South.

I am destined for drain, we all are, but give me this lifetime before it comes.  Let me get to the softness of your thighs and then maybe, just maybe, let me evaporate.

Typewriter Series #2653 by Tyler Knott Gregson

A morning of crow caws, raven screams into the wind, I sit silently, triangulation to find them in the woods.

Cyclone of sound that circles this place, black ships into the black hole, round and round I absorb them all.

They take turns, call and response, questions asked and questions answered, I sit silently, ignorant.

This, the melancholy of myself, surrounded by wild but unable to translate it, truth spills and I listen.

Land awhile, at least let me look at you, land and though I cannot call back, scream to me.

Typewriter Series #2652 by Tyler Knott Gregson

Thinking about the art they don’t say it is when hair gets all twisted and pulled and rolled around and tied up.

Hands behind backs elbows akimbo but inverted, all that chaos is calmed.

Art, this is, one of the countless many that is woman, that is you.

Typewriter Series #2651 by Tyler Knott Gregson

Writing is an odd thing, all learned humanity can dip their quills into the same words more or less. Variations on the same representations for things we feel, see, touch, taste, and hope for, but some know the melodies to make them dance, some know the right combinations to make suffering sound like singing.

Typewriter Series #2650 by Tyler Knott Gregson

Should I hide joy, bury it and put forth an image of loneliness, pretend to the masses that I am unencumbered, alone and waiting, that my words are meant for their eyes, that I am all they’ve ever been looking for? Would this help?  Would this convince all that I’m of more value, that I’m worth following along with?  

Defiantly, I am proud of this happiness, long fought and slow earned, I came through acres of mud and shit and ache and more darkness than you can imagine to sit in this stillness and glow, on this summit.

Here are my arms stretched wide, here are the cries of my elation, I am one thing, transparent as glass, what I feel you will see, what I feel you will feel.  This peace is an earned one, come who will, stay who should,

for I won’t stop shouting it.

Typewriter Series #2649 by Tyler Knott Gregson

Variations, many perform, subtle, they say, it’s almost truth, nearly all the way, at least more than half. One someone to the many, another to the few, time spent curating the impression given off, the life supposedly lived.

Be one way, and come what may, if there isn’t any mask to take off you’ll never forget to put it back on.

Dinnae - do not/don’t

Didnae - did not/didn’t

Disnae - does not/doesn’t

“I dinnae want to do that” means “I don’t want to do that.”

“They didnae find the loot” means “they didn’t find the loot”

“He disnae ken what he’s talking about” means “he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”

What I’ve noticed is that there is a tendency for non-Scots writers to always use “dinnae” regardless of context. I’m assuming that’s because it’s a quick shorthand to show the character is Scottish for the audience which is pretty much… you know. How media works.

Unfortunately, every time I hit a sentence like “he dinnae want it”, my brain goes ERROR ERROR ABORT OUT OF CHEESE.