aSoSS 28 | Assumption

You don’t need to be working when you’re not getting paid. Don’t make a habit of it, because when you leave college, people will take advantage of it.

Central Campus Classroom Building, 10:00AM, 8/25/2024

the lighthouse beckons. why do you listen? you’ve seen the scars: salmon slashes, tally marks against a dungeon. you call them bruises of honor, a spirit lived in pitcher and storm, throat muddy from screaming in the rain. bow, says the wind, and you do, with your knees in the sand and your face in the bowl of your hands. prayer or punishment? stop trying. the lighthouse blinks once, twice, and then winks out.


Summer reading for engineers? Summer reading??

Mosher-Jordan Dining Hall, 10:30AM, 8/27/2024

the seasons flit past–flecks of paint, a crumbling castle, an anchor in an empty sea. i drag my feet against the asphalt; i find solace all the insufficient ways in the way only a prisoner can. time dilates from within, a scrap the size of a single breath. a flattened lung, once composed of its consumptions, carving out my chest from the inside. i watch, delirious, as my name is etched into a headstone. they will throw my body out into the desert, a skull to be labeled an ancient and nameless king.


Is he really that short? I mean, he’s short but not short short. I guess five four.

Cancer Center Inbound, 3:00PM, 10/17/2024

we must be accepting of the things we cannot control. like two leaves skating the upward draft, we drive each other dizzy with our tongues (straight and sharp as quartz, a lesson in diffraction–light and feeling, are they really separate?) is it man versus man or me versus you? there’s a difference, even if you don’t admit it. i stare at the mirror, at the figure that plays with my hair and presses falsities into my mouth and avoids my eyes, and i know that no amount of time will turn it into a friend.

From nothing

Joy is, in itself, a worthy cause

But even it needs to be created

We are told that our feelings are somehow superfluous

Not real

Yet they can be altered

Changed

By outside forces

You tell me that this strange spirit on the stage isn’t real

Yet I see

The body move, gesture

Breathe

And is something in me not changed in seeing it?

Bodies moving

With each other, and not

Gesture

Breath

Voice

Move into the light

And that’s already a change.

Move downstage

Change

Ensemble in formation

Grasp onto another

Change

Lament

The gaze moves

Change

Meet an audience member’s eyes

And they are changed

A tear

Change

A laugh

A moment to the next

Draw breath

Maybe the soul on the page has never lived

Or maybe they’ve lived and then moved on

But now they breathe again

Exhale

Once I was you

Someday you will be me.

Are you angry yet?

Sad?

Joyful?

Relieved?

Have you yet been changed?

You will be.

Step into the light

Draw breath

Fill the body

Wake up the spirits

Don’t tell me magick isn’t real

This space is charged with light

Buzzing

Every body overfilled with life

And you are a story made flesh

Move, speak your spells right now

There are even witnesses

Invite them in

Mistakes are easily forgiven

Only one thing really matters:

Conjure.

Capturing Campus: Sleep Paralysis

Sleep Paralysis

Waking became worse than dreaming

of guilt and endless rooms

familiar and upside down

bottomless pits on the ceiling

falling upwards 

to breathe but not move

words like mercury in the throat

dispel panic through fluttering eyelids

know there is no sense in fighting

a prison of the mind

as limbs stiffen hard

at the sight

perched on the bed

with angel wings

borne of kerosene 

headlights for teeth

gnashing at the stillness

beneath tight sheets

A cherry pit soul

screams freedom

aSoSS 27 | Sidestep

I don’t know where we’re going.

I don’t know either, but that’s why we can figure that out together!

RoosRoast, 1:00PM, 9/7/2024

i can see it in your smile, your hesitation, that your head weighs heavy by the burden of unremembered dreams. do you still dream? it’s a silly question, but your breathing slows. yes. don’t you? somewhere, a siren wails. i resist a glance. i hardly sleep! a deflection, but you don’t press it. both of us are suffering from a deprivation of intimacy, a betrayal of the conscience. i take your hand and we set off together, chained by sentiment, sentenced to walk the earth alone: one of us carrying a burned map, the other a broken compass.


No problem… don’t tell anyone this ended 18 minutes early and we can both get some work done, okay? Alright see you!

Traverwood Library, 1:12PM, 10/9/2024

time should be defined not by length but by density. with each rotation of the hand, a fresh layer of ink is superimposed on the brain–not erased, but written over; there is simply no space to contain our existence. the words form, stack, and topple. you are there but hidden, impossible to uncover. my tears fall alternatingly, like footsteps crushing fresh snow. the things i cry for, are they crying for me?


[grabbing a box of kombucha] you gotta promise me you’ll drink one every morning!

Costco, 4:00PM, 10/15/2024

breathe deep enough and you can feel your belly brush your spine. is your stomach touching your back? the government lacks a measure of hunger, perhaps because it makes fools of all of us: our stomachs, our eyes, our touch. food deserts parch urban jungles. apartments pop up like mushrooms after the rain, grayed and wilted, porous, vacant. you stand up–the sand will swallow us and make soil from our bones–and walk away. the ache inverts my ribcage and gnaws at my tongue.

up above, the vultures wait their turn.

~Sappy Daze~ Day 2

we are rotting but instead let's say we are aging 
like fine wine because the expense of time is what 
makes us expensive and the cost of suffering can’t 
ripe faster than insufferable expectations and if we 
want a delectable cheese it’s desperation to bear the 
fruits of indefinite rotting that we continue to do so

- sappy