This soul is empty

here, take this

I have taken off my glasses

I have decided to trust my fingers against the keyboard and to

find a place among the dark that supports me

my face feels heavy and sunk back, cleaving to the pillow beneath it,

collapsing brain cavity

empty and flat.

the only promise of a working system is the taptaptaptapclickpink

of the keyboard as my fingers move heedless of the trauma in my mind

I'm not sure how thoughts and synapses and neurotransmitters have made us emotional, how does that happen?

they say to show empathy, you must be able to recognize yourself in the mirror.

this is the test that they give chimps and great apes and judge whether they pass or fail accordingly,

but is that all it takes?

a simple, yes....that's me?

I don't recognize myself anymore.

I don't feel like a person anymore.

I tell myself every day, I try to convince myself that I am

that I am who I once was. That I am stronger than brain waves, 

than the hot surge of tears that tightens my face and sinks my soul

that I am okay.

I cannot convince myself.

I cannot seem to grasp life anymore, but I can't tell you

— I CAN'T TELL YOU

I CAN'T SEEM TO SHOUT IT ENOUGH TO MYSELF

HOW COULD I CONVINCE SOMEONE ELSE

THAT I WANT

I want to possess that confidence again: the confidence in myself, that I can overcome, that I am smart....because I just don't feel it anymore and I don't know

I will keep plastering masks over my face; I will reuse them, ah, here is the set of eyes that show I am listening

the mouth that shows I know you're funny

the hair that says I care enough to bathe

the glasses that say I want to see this world....

the glasses I have taken off long before now.

~Hammeh

Horseshoe Crabs and Tangled Hair

quiet

There's an owl outside
and I haven't heard
owls since Massachusetts
with the dark weave of tree branches
and the solid scent of pine
the ultimate quietness of a soft ocean
at night.

There is a difference between city
houses, suburban houses, built of
sheetrock and sturdy window frames,
and houses built far apart, where
sea-grass meets doorframe and
sand meets carpet, where the night
is not blurred and broken into shards
of streetlight, where a soft breeze
rustles leaves and rumbles gravel,
where there is no super highway, no airplanes,

no barrier

between you and the fresh air
the sound of an owl
and the whisper of something far
older.

~Hammeh

There was a lot of darkness and a lot of eggnog

I feel like I've been drained

My thoughts
like building blocks do not fit

a square peg in a round hole

there are edges missing
and a muse
only finds scraps or nearly-wholes
to fill the breaches strewn across my soul.
Grinding down each thought or word
or symbool should perfect it
should make it shine
make it fit
quietly and profoundly in lines made
with simple enjambment,
but instead
they grate against each other,
filing bits away until only the hard,
blunt object sticks out with
no purpose or prose
or poetry.

~Hammeh

Just take a look at us

"How many times do I have to tell you?"  Nyaka groaned, shifting positions so that she was now hunched over Alcaeus, watching the screen he was working on.
Alcaeus flinched, not expecting her voice to be suddenly next to his ear.  Last he had checked, she had been on the other side of the room having a chat with that weird lizard thing....the thing she insisted not only had a name and rank, but also apparently cast some really great spells.  Yeah, he wasn't going to get mixed up in that relationship any time soon.
"Sorry," he answered.  "What, exactly, was I doing wrong?"  Perhaps a bit too snide, but he had been working on this project all night and was no longer sure whether or not he had blinked in the last few minutes.
Probably not a good sign.
"You keep spelling his name wrong!"  She hissed, jabbing a pointy finger at his monitor.  "It's R-A-I-I-S; you keep forgetting the second 'i'."
Alcaeus quickly corrected his mistake, "Sorry, sorry.  It's hard to keep track of all these weird names, you know."
Nyaka raised an eyebrow.  "Yeah, I think I know."

~Hammeh

Upon My Return

the walls of england

the cool press of lichen, soft green on gray rock

against the warmth of bright wind and yellow-blue sun.

the promise of damp grass and prickly ferns tickling

beneath the boundless clouds, each more wide and puffed up — 

like poets full of words, waiting to let loose upon the never-ending plush of great

green hills,

sloping for centuries into the distance, 

dipping foot-hills into the shocking cold of the ocean,

and crossed again and again by the walls

built before time meant something more than seasons.  

~Hammeh

In the end, there were lemons

Serotonin

It's having control over nothing
that causes the obsessive tiny
massive breaks in structure —
that cause my words to become
rough and ragged; there is no time
no care
for refinement.

I practice art like a sport,
following only house rules,
things that only make sense
when, for years, I have sat there
and forced memories —
there is no chance to edit the insanity

Start here, BEGIN WRITING

    You have 25 minutes,
      only write what you
        know — they take off
         for guessing.

_{Don't write about love.}

Your time ENDS now.



~Hammeh

Everybody Lies

4:00 pm and still in bed

Like a jellyfish, my body

morphs. 


Doorways become my objective,
and the drapery my haunt.

You can find me, sequestered into small spaces —

a square, an egg, a disc.  I lurk in the back,
the lost soul, the invisible one, one without hope. 

Sometimes, I prey on krill. 
        It's unnatural,  they say.

But I chose this shape, this ambiguous enigma.
I wrapped myself in jelly in the hopes that
the fall would not affect me,

in tentacles so you could not come close. 

Unused to the shape, I mistake tentacles for feet;
but my body is placid, brainless, spineless, indentured to the waves of the world about it. 

My purpose is moot, so my body morphs

to a shape unneeded and impenetrable. 

~Hammeh

Like A Dove in the Night

Depression

Holding on to the edge,
a reflection appears – a mirror against the ground. 

Perhaps the difference lies in being able –
        rough fingers turned soft but remembering guitar strings –

to touch the reality, to feel the whisper of trees before a storm,
        to dig your nails in and refuse —
                biting and determined —


to accept.

The wind like sand flying through trees to the end of the pail, and there in the night

it's just you and the words and the deep hum of crickets harmonizing with the fan.


The air is biting away pieces of my soul,
dark and secret and completely exposed to the viciousness of the breeze.

        I plaster words like bandages over the caverns of my soul, but reality whips through, leaving vacant stretches of frayed fabric 

        and endless remembrance of what once was,

and I have nothing left to lose. 

~Hammeh