poetry & prose

I am insatiable      every grievance levied against me amounts to ingratitude      I need to be broken like an unruly mustang like bitten skin      supposedly people hymned before names      their mouths were zeroes little pleasure portals for taking in grape leaves cloudberries the fingers of lovers      today words fly in all directions      I don’t know how anyone does anything      I miss my mouth sipping coffee and spend the day explaining the dribble to strangers who patiently endure my argle-bargle before returning to their appetites      I am not a slow learner      I am a quick forgetter       such erasing makes you voracious      if you teach me something beautiful      I will name it quickly before it floats away

So, back when Dracula first released in 1931, it came with an epilogue where Edward Van Sloan (who played Van Helsing) basically reassured the audience that vampires exist. They apparently removed it out of fear it’d anger religious groups. After almost a century, it’s now available

-Leave shit at the gate (coins, cigarettes, eggs, flowers)

-If alone go in silence, if with others speak in a hushed tone

-Wear a hat or head covering to prevent possession or bringing home unwanted spirits.

-Bring bells and/or rattles to wake the dead if desired

-Smoking in the graveyard or carrying a flame is an easy way to get the attention of the dead at night.

-Bring a knife or object made of iron should things get hairy (always bring a knife). Canes are also excellent tools for working with the dead

-have a way of gathering occult materia without being noticed by people or spirits (invisibility charms work best)

-If you're bringing spirits home with you (intentionally), don't turn around until you're across the threshold of your home

-Upon leaving the cemetery, say a prayer for the dead and wild things that inhabitant there

hockey is a clown sport for clowns.

Are you insane like me?

It's not always; not even often. But enough that the dreams linger through the day. And it's not the same dream, either, it's different in little ways. Sometimes the beaches are rough pale sand with the treeline far away, retreating from the surf; sometimes it's wave-tumbled round stone, sometimes it's foliated shale, the rocky lakebed teeth chewing up the driftwood;and sometimes there's no beach at all, just the abrupt cessation of forest where the water begins. Always, I am at the shore, and the world is going wrong.

The sky is low and grey and green and roiling, but I don't look up, because there is always something closer, more desperate, that must be dealt with first. Years ago, it was a creaking grey wooden house, warping in the wind and sparking suddenly with fire. Did you know that house fires are loud? They're deafening, like something roaring with hunger, never stopping to inhale. Sometimes the burning house is Vermilion Station; sometimes it's just a twisting old thing that I cannot find the doors to. Usually I am not alone, and I am trying to get someone else out. Sometimes it's a stranger; sometimes it is someone long dead in the waking world.

Sometimes there's a pier, slick wet concrete or smooth-worn wood, old enough that the grain is worn into grooves. The pier juts like a spine out into the lake, and I am running down, yelling into the wind at a ship tossing in the dark waves, unheard over the storm. The ship is sometimes a steel mammoth full of cargo, sometimes a billow of white sails. Always it is just at the edge of capsizing, far beyond my reach. Often, the storm overhead begins reaching down, turning and turning into a tornado, into blinding flare of lightning, into a white curtain of blizzard. Sometimes, over the howling storm, I hear a different rush of water, like some flood is crashing down the Porcupines, heading towards the shore.

And the water is always black and endless, which is how I know it's Superior. Jagged white-capped waves, icy wind and no hint of salt in the air; spray that touches your face like sleet. The dreams are often long, often confusing, always hurried, but they always end the same way.

I am at the edge of the water, looking north, and the horizon begins to bow upwards, as whatever is in the deep water begins to rise, lifting the lake on its back, bigger than a ship, bigger than a city, displacing water but moving so quickly that the whole surface of Superior is bulging upwards, breaking closer and closer to the surface--

(watching on the shoreline, I am not afraid. Fear is what came before this. Now that it is coming, I am only waiting. I am only a witness to whatever comes next)

--and always, before it breaches, I wake.