. // THE INSOMNIAC'S CALENDAR. )

[sinensys]

to my most esteemed snakeskin,
benevolent mask:
i ask that you lay yourself
to rest in the second-to-last drawer
of my storage dresser.
you have served well,
and endured the growth,
despite
the cynical drought's onslaught.
now i have grown and no longer cling
to the same self perception
i once held.
i grant you your tomb of choice --
the infrequently disturbed memory space --
to cast down your spirit and
be still, for once.
i release you, writhing mass of coils,
to your pit into which you may unfurl.

soon, another i
will anoint in your stead
-- to continue the tradition
in the name of growth.

[sinensys]

rip!

my beloved snakeskin shreds,
and ashen sands spill below
bitter bottled feelings
resurface
and leave an acidic taste in my throat.

i wipe my mouth with
flags and labels,
but my throat still burns.

manmade lines
and manmade lies
scar the ground and skin
as the troubled kinds
begin to loose their minds
and silently reach out to kin.

(they don't see it as i do, though, and cling to what they believe is truth).

[sinensys]

no longer
am i the intellect
i once idolised and was

and by my
own hands, at that

all that is left is
the space i masked,
once hidden by
pride, by indifference,
and again by pride

now the settled
dust mottles
the tatters
below

"a painting with
notes on its backside"
-- how the unintended irony
ripples in the organic brainmatter

[sinensys]

to you who traipse
beneath by skin and
within my skull ---
be still, yet not sedated.
lie down to rest, but not
for the rest of your time.
i ask of you to
unclench
your maw and remove
myself from it.
you and i are
the seasons in an offset,
the same cycle staggered
--- and when i rise, you
quell into a deafened descent.
now i see the parallel,
and ask of you to be gentle
or to be quick
in a familiar ritual.
northern summer,
southern winter ---
simultaneous,
in pairs,
as fractals of the same
beast.
soon i will rise and
take
your place, but
first
i beg for but a moment
of peaceful wakefulness,
undisturbed by the recesses
of our shared chamber,
which grows apart farther and farther.
you are still needed --- to
remind me of the things
i am and the things i do
not wish to be. your
role is invaluable. i
thank you for that.

[sinensys]

perhaps in vain i have sought to be less conceited in my mindset --- the snake and the crane mere puppets used to rouse that bleary-eyed creature within. in my attempts to stop lying to myself about what i was, i have dug a well beneath my own feet and toppled. my shift in attitude has reflected in clothing, music, and ideals --- have i forfeited all my strength to topple my inner support just to see the bare wooden beams constructed to remain upright?

the snake and crane, the meek and cunning, the one who treads acrosa borders yet sees through them --- have i truly tried to claim a false name in the name of a subdued yet friendly ghost?

perhaps the lie of my own meekness is simply the depression, then? i have cast out my "deceitful conceit" in attempt to regain an "honest outlook" yet now i suffer from disconnect. how could i allow such silent usurpers overtake my anxiety in the name of defeating depression? and more importantly --- how can i have forgotten that each of us is capable of advancing and growing in the name of boundless curiosity, that unyielding fruitfulness which gives until you cannot take?

true, i am american --- yet i was inoculated with the russian culture and continued to peer into other world views to understand the world better. i am not fluent elsewhere, and i still peer in from above, oil on water, rather than from within. perhaps this has been my greatest error in my most recent qualms: i have forgotten that my primary epithet will always be hyphenated, and by proxy, i will only ever find permanent solidarity with others who share the same endless tug-of-war identity. i am not the sum of my parts --- i am a different beast entirely, an entity borne of off-centered analogues, a collection of pieces i have taken and learned from. what good will each identity be to me if i learn nothing from them about myself?

first - i have favored one over the other.
and then -- sought reconciliation.
and yet now --- i realize my tense connections and coax from them the memory of unbound gliding, that keen aerial view woth which i learn from other cultures woth to create myself. for too long i have clenched my teeth and held my head down for the sake of coexistence. perhaps now i will seek to polish yet distill the clothes i have worn to identify myself with. the only name for the creatures like me is the name i have accepted to be my own, whatever it may be at the moment i need it to be. i am that which slips through crowds and scuttles between the lines in conversation as needed.

[sinensys]

the ichor gleams in the glass bowl,
but what have i gleaned from it?
--- hopefully not nothing, though i cannot
name the something i hope to have gained.
peace, respect --- perhaps a pact
with myself to reach what i had once wrought
from my own conceit?
the deceit of conceit was not self-esteem
but anxiety, a variety of self-indulgent masochism
--- that treacherous chasm into which
my self-confidence fell and collapsed until
i threw the rest of myself down with it.
there i picked up the pieces --- woodchips
and mulch by now --- to now reassemble
the machine i used to be.

i once feared the empathy and expressions
of uncertainty that i have since learned.
but will i have learned to
empathize with that which i
once feared and scorned?
and will i learn to step across those
fears to reach the human connections
for which i have yearned?

[sinensys]

how long have i been intimidated by the prospect of making a sound?

as water drips from the leak in the ceiling of the spacecraft, all one could do was watch the steady descent of life-fueling liquid. that same lifeblood of earth, now out at the far edge of the system, was going to fill the cabin and drown its anxious contents.

why do i stop in stupor when i open my mouth?

crib to crypt, the water leads us. folklore tells us to be wary of water, to fear it out of respect. religion, borne of good intentions and wrought by the need to hijack and control crowds, receives the message, decodes, and translates it before repeats itself. one last warning shout to the edge of humanity to be respectfully frightened by the very thing that made them possible.

why can't i just shout --- scream, yell. call. for help.

the water is shoulder-level now, gurgling in the vents as the metal beast suspending the vacuum beyond heaves in resistance of its bloating interior. no force acts on its titanium exterior; something primordial pushes outwards from within, seeking refuge from its unjust confinement. with no counterbalance, the spacecraft threatens the big empty with empty promises and unvoiced protest.

why am i always unvoiced --- self-sabotaging righteousness? a fear of something that overrides the need to survive?

the lifeforce ruptures the hull, and the strained atmosphere relinquishes its promise of safety and care. with a hiss of relief, it begins its rapid exit. the water, still seeping into the cabin, caresses the ship's wounds, filling them. the vast emptiness beyond coaxes the liquid into solid, blood clot in a gun wound.

i just have to say something --- anything. silence broken is peace broken. i just need to open my mouth and make more noise than a huff of breath.

pressure builds and forces the ice seal open; the pharaoh rejects anubis and forces open the tomb doors for the sun to shine on his death-chilled skin. except the edge of the solar system offers no sun, just the distant hint of a star called sol. out here, the sun offers no warmth, just the idle reminder of the impossible stretch between home and here. the reminder that aid is useless.

they're still not listening, are they?

water permeates all space once occupied by air --- the lifeblood settles, stilling as the heat escapes out into the cosmos, leaving behind a block of ice and its frozen passengers. mankind binds itself to that liquid, and so it lives and it dies at its semi-opaque hand.

fine, so be it: i follow my own band, listening for the wave of others. but i never follow yours, even if i promise out loud that i do.

by the time someone has found the spacecraft, mankind has moved on, no longer interested in the petty struggle of a lone scavenger ship.

funny how i can say things out loud, but never to draw attention to myself in times of need.

a sad kind of funny.

the water says nothing in return.

[sinensys]

most of my life has been a game of putting myself in someone else's shoes. i have calculated optimum strategies and contingencies with a reserve of lenses that would leave entire eyeglass fabrication factories sputtering with an embarrassed rage contained only by the dim apathy of a nine-to-five employee on the front lines. i have adapted my own path to tread on the only lightly-matted median between roads; the grass between asphalt leaves me out of the way yet still in the loop. i have shared these simulations with others verbally and advised them on the best line to follow for the best outcome.

i have done all of these and likely i will continue to do so until my ability to update reaches its end of service, my lifecycle dipping out sometime afterwards. the lines trace backwards and outwards, the endings either no longer under investigation or so thoroughly studied that one might confuse that simulation with my actual history. i live to scour the crossroads for roads not taken --- without that constant crisis to consistently solve and rediscover, i am left disoriented and at risk. i keep the simulations running and oriented at current or relevant paths, and in turn, the ship sails ahead into that depth previously glimpsed only in rendered telescopic images. i look upwards too long, and i lose my footing and continue to look up at the barren nothingness while i spin out of control on all three axes.

i have worn masks and traded them with others to complete my collection. it is what i do best: i used to pride myself in it; now i acknowledge my beloved multitool; one day i will simply respect it and nothing more. one day, i will be able to set aside this skill for someone, whether myself or someone else.

so why then, pray tell, have i not noticed this: i have often placed stylized effigies of myself into the driver's seat for the world and my crew to see while the ship creaks under the weight of disrepair and the endless vast nothingness beyond. this effigy is just some shell i idealize and set --- hollow yet wanted. how is it that i see through the thinking or feeling of others but, when faced with my own irrationality, i look to my straw-blooded captain while patching together the obvious hull breaches that cast out vital resources into the void? how can my own system notifications be drowned out by notifications of systems i am spying on, the foreign subject's alarms louder than my own domestic, internal alarms?

i don't know why the domestic klaxon barks in the lower recesses of my skull, and never how the hell it got moved from the bridge to the cargo bay. i just know someone on my ship did it without being explicitly ordered to by the captain or xo, and nothing more. it would mean something if my crew could be tangibly separated from my imaginary sunglass collection.

but at least i have my simulations and trajectory calculations, right?

[sinensys]

sound continues to reverberate until it reaches a vacuum or a force durable enough to absorb and quell those rattling molecules. that force would need to be rigid yet mobile, a firm padding to take in the insatiable movement, such that the atoms tire themselves out at cease their parade. the alternative is the vacuum, where there is nothing to thrum anxiously besides one's own thoughts in the skull and one's own skeletal structure as the ship putters along that vast nothingness into a deeper nothingness. in that sense, the padding is preferable, gentler on the body and brainwaves.

(so why, then, am i soft and still inside?)




//



i thought i might be miserable, but what if instead i'm simply ensnared by that fear of starting anew, of not being enough? the thought of being something else excites me like nothing else, but the steps to becoming that otherness is to put myself back on that silent ship out to the depths of the cosmos, where the murky nothingness creeps in and leaves me with only my vision and that rattling sensation of momentum corrected by the desynchronized thrusters.

[sinensys]

an oracle, chained
to a god's whims and wisdom.
to her tongue is chained
a populace.

the muscle, pulled
by gods and men in
both directions,
resists splitting ---
the spirit resists, and
her ubiety obeys.
unyielding, yet
wholly benign.
the populace is
shaped
by its deities,
and yet still it
shapes
its deities to fit the
narrative needed by
mankind, too.

perhaps, then, the harsh
divide
between the
divine and mechanical
is not so treacherously
steep.

(ah but where, then,
am i pulled?
or am i pulling?)