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Mansion Full of Black Holes

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Everyone I know is unhappy, I think as the refrigerator door opens and closes like a dilating mouth of stale light.

 

This one complains about his wife - she runs the gas out of the car and, now gives hand jobs instead of blow jobs.

 

This one tells me, his Youtube channel only has 35 K subscribers despite his skilled  yoga instruction.

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This one says, the sex parties in L.A. are great but his girlfriend became jealous when he made a different  woman squirt.

 

Its as if we’d gotten face value for a rare coin.

 

Its as if we were eating gourmet food out of the trash.

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If America is one thing and one thing only, it’s a beat-up vending machine.

 

The moon, the bulb in the refrigerator.

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We step outside to smoke American Spirits.

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Mysticism is like a Magic Eye optical illusion, I’m told. You just need to squint, cross your eyes and then hold it closer or farther from your face to discern the divine.

 

Did I take the medicine?

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Do I participate in ceremony?

 

Do I meditate?

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These questions are only rhetorical devices deployed by the speaker so as to elucidate such matters.

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The hourglass of reality upside down.

 

If we all want just one thing -  it’s more.
 

From our once-pristine planet, we aim super powerful telescopes at the cosmos as if the stars might spell out a cypher to make sense of our suffering.

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​​Like a trash bag bloated by bacteria, my lips curl into a sour smile.

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I don’t have to be here, in this mansion full of black holes.

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I could be anywhere really, vintage Playboys stacked by the canopied sick bed.

 

I would leave but the party is still raging in my living room.

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And so, I drink.

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Being on this planet is like getting sick in the movie theater - despite our nausea, we’re sticking it out, hoping for a happy ending.

 

And I drink, waiting for all of this to end.

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​Until:

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I undress.

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Anonymous.

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I go to bed.

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Untouched.

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The wind, like a mother shushing a child.

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Even I can strangle screams into whispers.

Writer

Photographer 

First-Time Human

JUSTIN D. OAKLEY

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