the dying sun watches over his shadow

stretch across the sand

he turns back and sees that red boat capsized

slowly sinking in a sea of blood

with no sound tethered to it

just the thin whistle of the wind

and the occasional mew of buzzards circling overhead

his legs trudges on,

chasing his shadow the way a dog does his tail

all the while his skull echoes

what he reckons the scream from a god's mouth

should be

The grasping vacuum of space surrounding the place where there is not air to carry sound.

Here and now.

With

Each

Beat

Of the

Sudden cacophony your heart beat has

Become.

The low bellowed hum of the combustion that makes the sun.

Told mostly in sunburns and freckles on the cheeks of loved ones where you come from. Not in this sonorous instinct, abnormal and distinct.

This combination is overlooked sounds waves piercing the numb of your ear drums and

That pace is what sets your breaths heaves;

your rhythmn of your lung.

Move on,

Still and unchanging as the surface of a placid puddle

Platicene reflections of our world

Slightly ripple and the

View in your minds eye receives it.

Sinking to these depths

Breath in and out in circles

And release it.

T-shirts, tank tops, shorts

Towels

T-shirts, tank tops, shorts, dress

Towels

Tank tops, shorts, dress, silk robe, panties, bedsheets

Towels

T-shirts, tank tops, shorts, slacks, button-down shirt, boxers

Towels

T-shirts, tank tops, shorts, slacks, hoodie, burp cloths, onesies

Towels

T-shirts, tank tops, shorts, slacks, hoodie, princess costume

Towels

T-shirts, tank tops, shorts, slacks, hoodie, jeans, crop tops

Towels

T-shirts, tank tops, shorts, jeans, crop tops

Towels

T-shirts, tank tops, shorts, pantsuits

Towels

T-shirts, tank tops, shorts

Towels

T-shirts, tank tops, shorts

Towels

T-shirts, tank tops, shorts

Towels

T-shirts, tank tops, shorts, sweatpants, camis, onesies, burp cloths

Towels

Slacks, blouse, jeans, T-shirts, fireman costume

Towels

Black dress, small suit

The Ortolan is a French songbird. It must be captured at the perfect time, blinded, forcefully fattened, and drowned in brandy. Those who choose to indulge must do so wholly. Bones, feet, head. All but the beak. The diner must veil their head. Some say it is to savor the aroma. Tradition says it is to hide from the piercing eyes of the savior.

The birds are dead. They do not feel the cracking structures between the teeth of their masters, hollow bones pricking gums and scraping teeth. I will not be as fortunate once I am plucked from this gilded room. I will feel the cracking of my bones. The piercing of my flesh. Ground between molar and canine, my fear-soaked fat will burst through my skin, bringing forth a sinful ecstasy that cycles for eternity. They feast as we feast, maddening further with each bite, insatiable greed for forbidden delicacies.

Saturn devouring his son. Jupiter has better luck than I.

Do they dare shield their eyes from God? Perfect faces free from shame, crafted by the astuteness of divinity. They act in His command. They act outside of it as it suits them.

Truth. Speculation. Pessimism? Prophecy.

They are older, more powerful.

Purgatorio. The fated shall always be.

I thought about sex yesterday

At first i felt guilty

Then i felt fine

And then i prayed

And changed my mind

I thought about his hand

And me shivering at his touch

But when does this thinking become

A thought too much?

I smiled at his smile

And the sound of his voice

Low and soft, and gentle in a way

Then i felt bad

Because what would my parents say?

I got in his car

Dark trap music blasting

Kept glancing over at him

My soul was asking

No, begging I suppose

He almost obliged

But i decided a kiss would do

The only regret I have at this point is that I am alive,

how could I feel any disdain for the ambrosia that

made me my own god.

I said being drunk was as close to being dead as I could get

and I meant it

and it was glorious.

There is bile crusting my carpet

I could never be bothered to clean and it has

eaten through my floor like

the booze through my liver.

I wish my liver had failed faster than the floorboards,

I wish I kept my acid in my gut

but I burned a hole through my facade.

You sent me away

and locked the liquor up.

The sober set into my veins like lead,

the poison didn't leave my blood for months.

Vision finally clear

the regret hits like shards of amber glass.

Triggers and spirals go hand in hand.

Like Daytime and Nighttime, can't have one without the other.

Triggers are in your face all day everyday.

Some are a dud, while others blow your world to pieces.

Like watching a favorite TV show and there is the death of a child, triggered.

Spiral takes the led.

Next thing you know you spend hours, days, weeks obsessing about where the child predators are.

How many assaults' happen every year?

Where are all the sex offenders in my 1 mile radius.

How do I know my kids are safe?

I obsess over the fact that in 1970 there were 3.6 billion of people on earth and the number is higher than 8 billion people in the year 2023.

How many are pedophiles?

Growing up it felt like I was constantly surrounded by men who liked to touch little girls.

There was only 3.6 billion people then. Minus the Children, Minus the Women.

8 billion people today. How am I supposed to protect my two daughters?

My Grandmother used to nail the doors and windows shut every evening.

As soon as the sun went down I knew to be inside and grab the hammer.

I happily hammered the nails firmly into the windows and blocking the doors.

This was my bedtime routine. No brushing my hair, no brushing my teeth even.

We just hammered the windows and doors shut nightly to be protected, From what? I was never aware. Most of my own predators were already inside.

This was just life for me up until the age of 5.

I figured out quickly why my grandmother nailed the windows and doors shut.

My mothers new friends were very nice to me but then they started to crawl into my twin sized bed on occasion.

I would lay in bed at night terrified.

I remember always being so scared.

Scared of being alone. Scared of not being alone. Scared of who was waiting in the dark.

I am in my thirties now.

I still scream every time I am woken up.

[Brand New Instagram page. Behold: https://www.instagram.com/taitaisensei/ ]

But also:

I'M BACK!

WITH UPDATES!!!

My friends—my motivation! My inspiration; and whoever else got caught in the compilation! I'd just like to say a super mega ultra: 'I'm sooorrrrrrry! >__<' it shouldn't have taken me this long to reach out to you again. I'm sure I've lost followers and fans but I am still and always will be eternally grateful to everyone who took the time to read Tainted Sky! To all the fans I didn't lose yet, THANK YOU FOR STANDING STRONG! I promise you I never stopped writing and editing and I am definitely a heck of a lot closer to getting this thing published and on our bookshelves than when you last heard from me!!! (I should invest in a proper bookshelf... *TaiSensei glances at her piles of books on the floor)

[To those who have no idea what I'm talking about, here's a link to the original story: https://www.theprose.com/book/1219/tainted-sky-reis-playlist ]

The reason you haven't heard from me:

I've been writing like crazy, making music like crazy, learning how to navigate Kickstarter like crazy, learning how to make a trailer like crazy, and being crazy as usual. I basically went full hermit mode. Picture a ninja under a turtle's shell with a robe, a cup of tea, and a strong aversion to the sun.

I can guarantee you that the quality of the story you read years ago vs now are completely different. New content, new backstories, new jokes, new and improved vocabulary (wow so smart, TaiSensei >:D ), and hopefully, if things go as planned, then new updates!

I finally caved to the social norms and unlocked an Instagram page. Or at least I'm trying to. I don't know what the humans put on these sites these days so "Ima do my own thing." (*coughcough*Spiderverse reference*cough*). But I mainly want a consistent place where fans can see where I'm at.

The end goal: Kickstarter!

I will be igniting a Kickstarter campaign (or 2) in hopes of being able to provide a full soundtrack for you guys to enjoy alongside your wacky physical copy of Tainted Sky!

With that said, the soundtrack is looking like it might still be a little ways off but if all goes well. The campaign would ensure that the book itself will look much cooler than your average book, with some custom pages, musical symbols, and fun speech bubbles decorating the margins. But more on that with the Instagram updates.

However, none of this will be possible without support, so please, plzplzplz, spread the word! Even if you're not interested, share this, or better yet, share the story with someone who might be interested. Doesn't even have to be prosers, I'm going meta, so you should too! break the fourth wall and share it with friends/family/and those not tied to this dimension.

I will also be doing my best to make this little fanvillage of ours into a whole fandom and then into a FANDOMINATION! BWAHAHA!

-ahem-

Don't have Instagram:

Don't worry. I'm accumulating an email list so feel free to put your email here: https://artisanal-pioneer-5844.ck.page/8f212835bb

Alternatively, you may DM me through the prose with your email (or a list of emails +___+)

Either way you'll only be subjected to the major updates. I promise not to spam your inbox. I'm too anti-social for that anyway.

Zedge, on the other hand.... >:)

(no I'm kidding, I'll keep my characters under control)

Fun Bonus note:

Any and all fans who had given any of my trackters a like and/or a comment before this post will get a special discount (I kept track) so I really hope you all take advantage of that.

To summarize:

Instagram here:

https://www.instagram.com/taitaisensei/

Email drop-off corner, here:

https://artisanal-pioneer-5844.ck.page/8f212835bb

Mostly abandoned twitter attempt... is unfortunately here: https://twitter.com/TaijaSensei

The original (unedited) story here:

https://www.theprose.com/book/1219/tainted-sky-reis-playlist

And finally:

THANK YOU TO ALL MY READERS. THIS IS ALL FOR YOU!

I miss the old factory buildings in the inner cities. Most are still there, but they aren’t the same. They’re lifeless now. I mean lifeless in strange terms. They’ve always been that way in some sense, I just find the prior more poetic. I used to sleep in old slop houses if the the risk of getting booted out was minimal. It may seem like a beggars option, and it was. Touring in a bus with three other people is hell enough. Tommy James of the Shondells called it “a sewer on wheels”. That’s exactly what it is. When one has smelled every foul orfice in a space the size of a large bunk bed for months, it can drive anyone crazy. In retrospect, an abandoned bakery or brick mill isn’t that bad.

Even the smallest of establishments have eons more room than van. There’s more people as a plus, new people, bastards you haven’t shared a toothbrush with. It’s a breath of fresh air to not hear stories that have been told to you over a dozen times. One word: rice with shit. Getting it is a rare delicacy in America. The perks of being a musician can pay off here nonetheless. No one had to know who I was, I just had to live that life. The thought of us lights a fire in anyone, even those with less than ourselves. It’s like we have a lottery ticket in our hands, a possible one at least. People just want to know you, it’s that simple. They don’t want you to succeed, they don’t want you to fail either, they just want to hear the hells you’ve withstood making it, trying to make it, or not making it.

Going in one of these places felt like going back two decades in time, a dingy hope of punks, students, outlaws, and homeless all uniting in one humble unit. It was a sanctuary of sorts, even for a man of capitalistic excess as myself. People were living it rough, but they didn’t make it about themselves. These people gave the feel of meeting long lost second cousins, good ones at that. They weren’t there to strip you dry. That was for the streets. This was for the “movement”. I mean it in vague terms as it is more of a lifestyle than any tangible political belief.

There was plenty of cocaine and weed of course. They’d give you anything else under the sun if you just asked. I never understood how these places didn’t devolve into drug dens. Perhaps there was an unspoken code of buy first use later. That would explain why I didn’t see much more than a few punk heads smoking a joint. It also wasn’t uncommon to see a passerby try to snort a remaining coat of snow off of the floor or someones shoe.

I’ll never revisit my old haunts. I remember them when they were good. I have no desire to see a shell of the good times. The smell of cold stone, cigarette walls, and thick dust will always bring a bittersweet nostalgia in me. The only experience equivalent to it was my outdoor escapades as a boy, the building of flimsy lean toos that got destroyed by rival neighboring kids, the secret spaces under cars to find dirty magazines, the backyard camping in puny pup tents, the urban legends I’d hear about the local woods. Squatting was a “mature” variation of all those things.

We were all kids at the end of the day. We had places to go, scene friends to meet, shows to attend, and tours to run. Most importantly, we had tangible goals, things to look forward to. There was always an excited buzzing. Any person with a creative side would post flyers or poetry on the walls. The papers would peel off in the moist air over the beds and roached furniture. It gave a squatters cave their classic grunge look. For the fortunate doomsday photographer, there was no need to look further. The perfect home for the last of humanity was right before their disbelieving eyes. We were proud prowlers of the dungeons. Enter if you dare.

The time I almost got caught in one is a time I’ll never forget. That’s what this is really all about, my story. I had to accentuate the fondness of couch crashing before I began. In reality I was a half mile away. I’d ran one of my first marathons in downtown Jacksonville. I’ve never been much of a runner, but perhaps that was to my benefit. I went through the whole stretch with two guys about half my height. We called them dwarves then, midgets now. I don’t think either term is any less questionable. Randall and Briggs were their names. Their titles matched the two perfectly. Randall was skinny with blond hair and shoes that looked beyond their sell by date. Briggs was the chubby type. He wore a Wichita State jersey and a baseball cap where ever he went.

Our formation looked like the works of a mild prank, me in the middle, the short ones at my sides. We were like this for the whole stretch, a perfect line. Curious eyes followed us where ever a crowd gathered at the curbs to watch. It’s also important to add that I was in stage clothes. Picture a perverse combination of Bowie's striped suit, hair metal spandex, and pink feathered anklets. That’s what I was wearing. By anyone’s guess, the companions were my entourage. To what place of importance, no one had a clue, not even Randall and Briggs, no one but me.

Of all states, Florida’s architectural landscape is the most disjointed. When walking down the street of any city there’s luxury apartments and old shops that look like crack houses on the other side of the street. Jacksonville’s like that in some ways. The main parts of it are alight until you get to certain pockets. Even in the day time, these areas feel like your entering a failed mecca within a third world country. Within the first lengths we were passing massive yachts in the harbor, crumbling suburban slums in the next. That’s where I intended to go when this was all over. My two friends agreed.

“I wonder what kind of women hang out in these parts,” said Randall as our shoes crunched against the hot pavement.

“Don’t get your hopes up. No one knows I’m coming,” I replied.

“Aww man, don’t bum me out like that, we’re only half way done with this thing.”

“Picture white bearded college guys smoking a joint, they probably think their super cool hanging out in the inner city.”

“Your killing me here! I’d take a bald punk chick over that.”

“Be prepared to talk heavily misguided, but well intentioned racial political theories.”

“Boooo!” panted Randall.

I’m glad we were running in conversational pace, the two might have not made it after this sobering realization. Maybe if the others had known my whereabouts, there’d be more than a few cops hanging in the area. I say this to myself to feel better about the incident. Sometimes I think we cast a curse on that hideaway. We were dressed as we would’ve been at any good backstage party. Anyone who didn’t just see it as a funny gag, got the joke. Randall and Briggs had been my wingmen from the beginning. A picture of them both beside me wearing our respective outfits became a sort of early meme. We were standing backstage after a festival in Cincinnati.

Our manager and aspiring photographer took the photo with a polaroid. It somehow ended up alongside a featured article in Rip magazine: The boyz are back in town. That was the title. Picture and all took up two whole pages. 80s metal mags liked to annunciate Z in everything, even if it made little to no sense. The scoop was that I'd started another tour after a third album release and a two year hiatus. My two buddies had been around before that. It just took one moment for them to come into the limelight. The funny thing about it all is that they usually wore matching lime green jumpsuits to gigs. I would've found that picture funnier, but the latter stuck. That night their clothes would be soaked in booze, mustard, whipped cream, and silly string on all sides. Perhaps that's what those cops pictured when they approached the hangout.

When we came near it on the course, we'd reached a lull within the running crowd. The wheelchairs were far ahead of us and those going slower were a half mile behind. The forces that be wanted us and only us to see the raid as we passed by. Several cop cars had parked outside a half cylindrical brick building. I'd heard the place was used for ammunition during World War 2. There was a set of sleeping quarters and a homemade stage at the back. Kids would use it to recite their political slam poetry or novel on busy nights. In this moment none of us were sure if we should continue running past the cars. There was no one else with us to signify we were runners and not stoners a little too late to the party. We decided to slow our pace and wait for the cops to get inside.

It didn't take them long to make a move. At least ten of them busted though the doors five hundred feet in front of us. Everything that happened after is all here say. A few fans that were there explained to me later that the authorities caught wind of weed dealings. Even in its squatter state, the inside was torn to pieces after the search was finished. In my mind I could picture several dozen yuppies reaching in desperation behind tank ammunition shells, below bunk beds, and between tetanus inducing piles of steel pipes. I doubt the cops found all the weed that day. Half of it made out the back door with the kids. The other quarter is wedged in the infinite heaps of scrap metal. Anyone in Florida who wants free weed should give this place a visit, but its been twenty years now. I'm not sure if pot gets better with age.

Nine people were brought out by the time us three passed the scene. I could see the rest of them making a mad dash out the factories other end. The cops didn't notice us flying by. They were too busy making heads and tales of the escapees. I had to turn my gaze away from it, but it didn't matter. My good vibes were gone. I was in for ten more miles of physical anguish with nothing to look forward to after. I couldn't imagine how hard it was for my shorter counterparts. Somehow we all finished the whole thing without stopping. That was a hard deed to live by in those sobering moments. I wanted to sneak behind the building and lead the runners toward another hideout in the nearby swamp. The authorities around there had a stigma against alligators. I can confirm the caimans don't mind a few people moping around from personal experience.

Before we knew it, it was over; the marathon, the 80's, the 90's, the last tour with my band, the end of a glorious era so bittersweet. The Florida hideout is long abandoned. People don't gather like they used to, not even the youth. Sometimes I wonder if there's still people out there that want to be like me. If they do, there's no sign of commitment. That's how things go I guess, trends of the ideal front man. They fade away, come back, and fade away again. I miss the old times, as many do, that fun chaos, that feeling you could mess up as much as you wanted and still come out okay. Everyone is so afraid now. But perhaps at the end of the day we are all confused souls trying to outrun cops, a pound bag of pot in hand.