The only thing I know for sure is that all the philosophers were wrong. Death is not pleasant nor something to not be feared, death is cold. Dante was right by setting the 9th circle of hell in ice because torment is not burning eternally it is being gnawed by frost’s relentless bite.

The slow thawing was when I regained conciousness. Not some half-assed pediatric conciousness but Jungian conciousness, acute awareness and wisdom. The reverberations of life permeated my body as waves of sensation crawled across my frame. It was like being stabbed over every inch of my body.

As I began my slow journey outward I began to sense more and more. My eyes adjusted to light as if they had been hibernating and needed to relearn how to see. My body began to shiver from the cold as my feeling bagan to return. Torents of sound richotcheted around my brain like bullets colliding isnide of my skull.

It took a few minutes to relize I was not alone. I truly think that for a few minutes I beleived I was the only man alive, blissful minutes. The men who stood around me were tall, but I had no great claim to perception of height because when I looked across the room I saw a drinking glass stand seven feet tall.

“His irises are uneven and they keep unfocusing,” one of the doctors said. But to my untrained ears it sounded like a hoard of racoons clawing through trash,

My sight remained tinged for a few minutes but soon my senses began to dull. The heightened state of conciousness, however, did not leave me.

It was days before I could remember why I had gone into the cryochamber. Peices of the complex puzzle of life formed in my mind and slowly conected. The yound boy who would one day become Adolf Hitler. My mother who carried me a few years to early so that I would have to serve in one of the biggest blood bathes known to man. The mother of a future German soldier who would throw a hand grenade near me in such a precise location that only a few shards hit my frontal lobe leaving me wounded but not dead. The years of trying to find expieremental surgeries to remove the shards and finally my retreat to the cryochamber.

If even one of those peices had been altered slightly, it would have changed my future and subsiquently made a blemish in the overall history of mankind.

I was under constant surveilance, as if I were in the Soviet Union and not the United States of America, in the facility.

I was given a small room, which resembled a hotel with plad curtains and a TV. The TV I was given was like I remmebered: small, boxy and black and white. They told me a lot had changed but if the TV were a symbol for how much things have changed then not much seemed to have shifted. This beleif was soon destroyed as I eyed the mini fridge (that is what I was told it was called.) The shelves were decked with food that I did not recognize.

As I was inspecting my room for clues of what the future meant for me, a doctor entered my room.

“I assume that knocking is a foreign concept in 2019,” I said sarcastically to the doctor. His only response was a shameless chuckle which infuriated me.

“I do apologize for that, but I am very eager to be talking to you. There are only a handful of people who have been frozen for as long as you have and survived.”

“Please get to the point of why you are here I wish to sleep,” I said with a hint of distaste.

“Yes of course. We have given you scheduled times that you may leave with an assistant so that you may begin to familiarze yourself with the world,” the doctor said.

“If this TV is any indication of what this world has become then I will not have to familiarize myself with much,” I responded.

“Oh. That is not what televisions look like now. We have tried to decorate your room in a manner which fit your time period. Televisions are very large now.” My superiority wavered at this. Up until this point I hadn’t thought much about the advancments of human technology because I had beleived it hadn’t advanced too much.

“Well I guess we will see how I can handle it,” I say incredulously, “Now please leave.”

The doctor swiftly got up and drifted out the door.

The first thing I noticed, when I left the facility, was that cars had advanced so that they looked like sharp wasps instead of fluid worms. They moved faster and vibrant colors splashed across each one. Even the dull greys and browns were glossy and colorful.

The second thing I noticed, as we drove into the suburbs of New Jeresey, was the ammount of people. I was told that we were still leagues away from any actual city, but swarms of people choked the streets. They were all different colors, mixing together like choclate powder in milk. Like ants, they all flowed from there dwellings and recreation centers clogging the world.

We eneded at a park in New Jeresy outside of all city limits. The grass had seemed to dull in the years since I had seen it. The clouds were darker as if they had been pumped with gasoline (I later figured out that was the case).

I envisioned my world, my life in the fold of this gargantuan monster of planet. I was enveloped in the claustrophobic feelings which were created from the sheer ammount of people I had seen.

The park itself seemed so uncomfortably unsanitary that I retreated back to the car. The trees were the only thing which hadn’t changed all too much. They stood like sentinals of time unhindered by its flow.

It reminded of a story I had been told when I was young. It went a little like this, “One day a strong storm swept across a forrest leveling many trees. As one of the trees fell, it landed next to a little fern which had not fallen. The tree, while laying there, asked the fern ‘how is it that I have fallen and you have not?’ The fern responded, ’Dear friend, the wind is proud, for this reason we ferns bow to it whereas you trees stand steadfast. You would not have fallen if you had shown humility.”

I found myself seeing the planet in the same way. The advancments made by human kind were just the steadfast stubborness of the tree and one day soon, I am convicned, we will follow that fate.

I stretch my bones across canvas

to block the algorithm

I am never now

sped away to neon light

I know no animal

alive inside of the machine

when darkness comes

reflections fade

like the memories

of ghosts

we seek to leave

upon the shore.

we only hope,

they stay above water.

balanced on the line

where ocean meets sand,

where recollection

tiptoes safe above

our demons.

but we can't look back,

because

we still believe nothing

has fallen.

and our escape

seems a lot brighter,

If labeled as an adventure.

when darkness comes.

we escape.

still human.

grateful to forget.

When my mind feels the need to dredge the depths of my heart and soul in an attempt to rejuvenate and reinstate my humanity.

When my mind flicks on the light and my heart and soul scramble to hide. Grown accustomed to and comfort found within the folds of darkness, the brightness is more than offensive.

When my heart and soul refuse to be entertained with such things as comfort and joy and continue to bathe in the mire of complacency.

Like rubies and gold make their way to the surface , so my true soul rises. And for a moment is brushed off to reveal its soft, tenderness.

She seized with unclean hands

the cusp of a new day dawning,

crumpled it into a little wad

throwing it into clouded sky.

She chose instead to relive

the glory days of their love,

two pieces of a jigsaw puzzle,

a perfect harmony until

they no longer balanced.

He had blackened and charred

while she was still unscathed

in her own demented mind

as she threw gasoline

around his sleeping hulk

and lit a match which flamed

with such exquisite beauty.

The scorched flames arose, as

she clasped vignettes of the past

to her besmirched breast.

Yesterday was smoldering

in the embers while she

had tossed today away forever,

in rumpled shreds of darkness.

Tomorrow would arise

like a burning phoenix

as would her new beginning

out of the strewn ashes

vacant without him.

Oh no! Don’t tell me I’m nothing -

something lives inside my head,

my black eyes have seen it all.

I leave my calling card on doorsteps,

scattering echoes of wind as proof

that I am a new beginning, waiting

for the fog on the deserted road

to develop wings and begin to fly.

I bare my tainted pen, becoming

something in shadows climbing

over empty spaces, leaving space

for something echoing in soup bowls.

Feed me! Feed my emptiness of soul -

move the migraines in my cloudy vault,

follow footprints into charisma of dawn.

I may mean nothing but I am your world

your empty spot, just waiting to be filled.

The jurors were dropping like flies!

I smiled wickedly to myself in the jury lunchroom as I nibbled on my sandwich which I had brought from home. I knew the defendant was not guilty and I had enough remorse to make absolutely sure that the jury would not bring a guilty verdict.

The first two deceased jurors were replaced by two alternates. How did they die, you ask? Well, the first one died in the cafeteria of an alleged “heart attack” but I knew that I had slipped a small vial of sweet antifreeze in his iced tea. I had watched him two days ago and knew that he enjoyed it rather sweet. We were not sequestered so I was able to go home at night and slip the antifreeze into a hand sanitizer container in my purse. After all, who would suspect a hand sanitizer because we all knew the surfaces in the jury room were not very clean.

Unfortunately, the second juror slipped on spilled grease as he was getting into his chair in the lunchroom. Obviously, someone must have dropped something slippery by the chair where he usually sat. He was taken by ambulance to the hospital with a cracked skull and a hematoma and unfortunately did not make it.

Now there were ten! Somehow, I smirked as I thought of the nursery rhyme “Ten Little Indians” where the little Indians met their fate in nefarious ways.

Well, I knew I need not go further because without alternate jurors, a mistrial was called. The evidence was not deemed sufficient to retry the case although the “double jeopardy clause” did not apply in this case. The original witnesses were shaky at best and the evidence was circumstantial so it was decided not to retry the case.

I’ll bet you are wondering why, in my second paragraph, I admitted I felt some contrition. Do I seem like the type of person who would feel any sadness at their deaths?

I have to admit that I knew the murder victim. He had picked me out on a dating website and we began an affair (I later found out he was married, the skunk!) One night, after absolutely glorious hot and heavy sex, I stabbed him in the ear with a hatpin. After all, he deserved to die for his deceit. I could not let the innocent person, the defendant, suffer for my walk on the wild side, could I now?

Man outside my window

lives my outside life,

trapping me within

my fishnet boundaries.

The skeleton of his soul

stands in piles

of cigarette butts

crunching underfoot.

The man was I

and I was he -

osmosis through glass

as I shut the window,

leaving a borderline crack

to squeeze to other side

of life, prying eyes open

to see my exterior man,

drawing face to glass

to behold the inner workings

of his buried thoughts,

begging to be confined

within his outlines

to entwine

inside his body

of sweeping darkness.

What do you call it when you're sad from memories you never made and your eyes burn with tears you've never cried? What do you call it when your heart feels heavy from missing people you've never known, never seen, and yet they leave traces in the corner of your mind? What do you call it when you long for a childhood you never had and stolen moments you never took? What do you call it when a piece of you is missing but you don't know what it is or where to find it so your brain tries to fill the gap in but it's all so wrong? What do you call it when it feels like you're standing in line, waiting, just waiting for something and yet you've already missed everything?