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Now I’m Just Standing Here On The Conveyor. Along For The Ride. I Reach The End, Turn Around, And Go Back The Other Way. The World Has Been Distilled. Being Dead Is Easy. After A Few Hours Of This, I Notice A Female On The Opposite Conveyor. She Doesn’t Lurch Or Groan Like Most Of Us. Her Head Just Lolls From Side To Side. I Like That About Her. That She Doesn’t Lurch Or Groan. I Catch Her Eye And Stare At Her.

-Isaac Marion

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Now I’m Just Standing

Isaac Marion

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Now I’m Just Standing Here On The Conveyor. Along For The Ride. I Reach The End, Turn Around, And Go Back The Other Way. The World Has Been Distilled. Being Dead Is Easy. After A Few Hours Of This, I Notice A Female On The Opposite Conveyor. She Doesn’t Lurch Or Groan Like Most Of Us. Her Head Just Lolls From Side To Side. I Like That About Her. That She Doesn’t Lurch Or Groan. I Catch Her Eye And Stare At Her.

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...and We'll See What Happens When We Say Yes While This Rigor Mortis World Screams No.

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Once Again The Absurdity Of My Inner Thoughts Overwhelms Me, And I Want To Crawl Out Of My Skin, Escape My Ugly, Awkward Flesh And Be A Skeleton, Naked And Anonymous.

I Feel An Unfamiliar But Pleasant Sensation In My Lips, Tugging Them Upward. This Is... New.

Maybe This Is Why I Sleep Only A Few Hours A Month. I Don't Want To Die Again. This Has Become Clearer And Clearer To Me Recently, A Desire So Sharp And Focused I Can Hardly Believe It's Mine: I Don't Want To Die. I Don't Want To Disappear. I Want To Stay.

There’s Not Really Such Thing As ‘good’ Or ‘bad’ People, There’s Just Like…humanity. And It Gets Broken Sometimes.

I Think For A Minute. Watching My Wife Fade Into The Distance, I Put A Hand On My Heart. "dead." I Wave A Hand Toward My Wife. "dead." My Eyes Drift Toward The Sky And Lose Their Focus. "want It...to Hurt. But...doesn't." Julie Looks At Me Like She's Waiting For More, And I Wonder If I've Expressed Anything At All With My Halting, Mumbled Soliloquy. Are My Words Ever Actually Audible, Or Do They Just Echo In My Head While People Stare At Me, Waiting? I Want To Change My Punctuation. I Long For Exclamation Marks, But I'm Drowning In Ellipses.

My "heart". Does That Pitiful Organ Still Represent Anything? It Lies Motionless In My Chest, Pumping No Blood, Serving No Purpose, And Yet My Feelings Still Seem To Originate Inside Its Cold Walls. My Muted Sadness, My Vague Longing, My Rare Flickers Of Joy. They Pool In The Center Of My Chest And Seep Out Of There, Diluted And Faint, But Real.

He Is Spent. His Mind Is Mercury Again, Its Brief Surge Of Humanity Melting Into An Oily Residue On Its Surface, And He No Longer Understands The Feelings He Felt In That Strange Moment On The Overpass. But He Did Feel Them. They Did Happen. They Rest On The Murky Seabed Of His Mind, Buried Under Sand And Silt And Miles Of Grey Waves. Patient Seeds Waiting For Light.

Why Is It Beautiful That Humanity Keeps Coming Back? So Does Herpes.

All My Life I Have Battled The Alarm Clock, Pummeling The Snooze Button Over And Over With Mounting Self-loathing Until The Shame Is Finally Strong Enough To Lever Me Upright.

I Used To Split My Time Between Writing, Music And Painting. I Would Work On A Book And Then Abandon It, Start A Band, Do An Album, Quit Music, Then Do A Gallery Show. Eventually I Decided To Give Writing A Serious Shot.

Are We All Just Dark Age Doctors, Swearing By Our Leeches? We Crave A Greater Science. We Want To Be Proven Wrong.

I Wish People Were Willing To Dig A Little Deeper Than The Surface Elements Of A Premise Before Tossing One Story In With Another.

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All The Shitty Stuff People Do To Themselves... It Can All Be The Same Thing, You Know? Just A Way To Drown Out Your Own Voice. To Kill Your Memories Without Having To Kill Yourself.

I Adapt To Things Quickly, Including Good Things, Which I Wish I Could Shut Off Sometimes. My Friends Have To Keep Reminding Me How Crazy My Life Has Become, And Then It Hits Me Fresh And I Just Slap My Forehead And Think, "wait, What... ?"

I Think We Crushed Ourselves Down Over The Centuries. Buried Ourselves Under Greed And Hate And Whatever Other Sins We Could Find Until Our Souls Finally Hit The Rock Bottom Of The Universe. And Then They Scraped A Hole Through It, Into Some ... Darker Place.

Here We Are On The Road. We Must Be Going Somewhere.

You Can Order Yourself To Treasure A Moment, To Cling Tight To A Feeling And Never Let It Fade, But It's Your Brain, That Three-pound Lump Of Hamburger, That Makes The Final Call.

I Can No Longer Believe In Any Voodoo Spell Or Laboratory Virus. This Is Something Deeper, Darker. This Comes From The Cosmos, From The Stars, Or The Unknown Blackness Behind Them. The Shadows In God's Boarded-up Basement.

I Hate That She's Hurt. I Hate That She's Been Hurt, By Me And By Others, Throughout The Entire Arc Of Her Life. I Barely Remember Pain, But When I See It In Her I Feel It In Myself, In Disproportionate Measure. It Creeps Into My Eyes, Stinging, Burning.

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You Should Always Be Taking Pictures, If Not With A Camera Then With Your Mind. Memories You Capture On Purpose Are Always More Vivid Than The Ones You Pick Up By Accident.

It Frustrates And Fascinates Me That We'll Never Know For Sure, That Despite The Best Efforts Of Historians And Scientists And Poets, There Are Some Things We'll Just Never Know. What The First Song Sounded Like. How It Felt To See The First Photograph. Who Kissed The First Kiss, And If It Was Any Good.

You Might Say That Death Has Relaxed Me.

Breathing Is Optional, But I Need Some Air.

I Want A New Past,new Memories, A New First Handshake With Love. I Want To Start Over In Every Possible Way.

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It's Hard To Take Your Life So Seriously When You Can See It All At Once.

Every Time I Go To Sleep, I Know I May Never Wake Up. How Could Anyone Expect To? You Drop Your Tiny, Helpless Mind Into A Bottomless Well, Crossing Your Fingers And Hoping When You Pull It Out On Its Flimsy Fishing Wire It Hasn't Been Gnawed To Bones By Nameless Beasts Below.

Warm Bodies Ended Up Becoming One Of The Most Personal Relatable Things I've Written.

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You Know Things Are Moving. You're Changing, You Fellow Dead Are Changing, The World Is Ready For Something Miraculous. What Are We Waiting For?

Nothing Is Permanent. Not Even The End Of The World.

End Of The World

What Happened? How Did I Get Here? How Could I Have Known That My Choices Mattered?

Are My Words Ever Actually Audible, Or Do They Just Echo In My Head While People Stare At Me, Waiting?

She Gathers My Half Of The Blankets Around Her And Curls Up Against The Wall. She Will Sleep For Hours More, Dreaming Endless Landscapes And Novas Of Colour Both Gorgeous And Frightening. If I Stayed She Would Wake Up And Describe Them To Me. All The Mad Plot Twists And Surrealist Imagery, So Vivid To Her While So Meaningless To Me. There Was A Time When I Treasured Listening To Her, When I Found The Commotion In Her Soul Bitter-sweet And Lovely, But I Can No Longer Bear It.

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Differentiation

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What's Wrong With People?" She Says, Almost Too Quiet For Me To Hear. "were They Born With Parts Missing Or Did It Fall Out Somewhere Along The Way?

What Wonderful Thing Didn't Start Out Scary?

Wonderful Things

Writing Isn't Letters On Paper. It's Communication. It's Memory.

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We Are Where We Are, However We Got Here. What Matters Is Where We Go Next.

There Is A Chasm Between Me And The World Outside Of Me. A Gap So Wide My Feelings Can't Cross It. By The Time My Screams Reach The Other Side, They Have Dwindled Into Groans.

What Happened To The World Was Gradual. I've Forgotten What It Actually Was, But I Have Faint, Fetal Memories Of What It Was Like. A Smoldering Dread That Never Really Caught Fire Till There Wasn't Much Left To Burn. Each Sequential Step Surprised Us. Then One Day We Woke Up, And Everything Was Gone.

I've Always Been Interested In Writing From The Perspective Of An Outsider.

Everything You See, You Might Be Seeing For The Last Time.

Came To . . . See You.” “but I Had To Go Home, Remember? You Were Supposed To Say Good-bye.” “don't Know Why You . . . Say Good-bye. I Say . . . Hello.” Her Lip Quivers Between Reactions, But She Ends Up With A Reluctant Smile. “god You're A Cheeseball. But Seriously, R—

We Smile, Because This Is How We Save The World.

I Adapt To Things Quickly, Including Good Things, Which I Wish I Could Shut Off Sometimes.

That's Why We Have Memory. And The Opposite Of Memory— Hope. So Things That Are Gone Can Still Matter. So We Can Built Off Our Pasts And Make Future.

Is This Muteness A Real Physical Handicap? One Of The Many Symptoms Of Being Dead?or Do We Just Have Nothing Left To Say?

It's A Strange Feeling, Being So Utterly Surrounded By Her. Her Life Scent Is On Everything. She's On Me And Under Me And Next To Me. It's As If The Entire Room Is Made Out Of Her.

I Crush Her Against Me. I Want To Be Part Of Her. Not Just Inside Her But All Around Her. I Want Our Rib Cages To Crack Open And Our Hearts To Migrate And Merge. I Want Our Cells To Braid Together Like Living Thread.

Inspirational Love

What A Massive Responsibility, Being A Moral Creature

Sometimes I Wonder If He Has A Philosophy. Maybe Even A Worldview. I'd Like To Sit Down With Him And Pick His Brain, Just A Tiny Bit Somewhere In The Frontal Lobe To Get A Taste Of His Thoughts. But He's Too Much Of A Toughguy To Ever Be That Vulnerable. - R On M

We Have To Remember Everything. If We Don't, By The Time We Grow Up It'll Be Gone Forever.

Remembers Everything

I Wonder How Well She Sleeps At Night, And What Kind Of Dreams She Has. I Wish I Could Step Into Them Like She Steps Into Mine.

In My Palm I Can Feel The Echo Of Her Pulse, Standing In For The Absense Of Mine.

What I'm Saying Is, When You Have Weight Like That In Your Life, You Have To Start Looking For The Bigger Picture Or You Are Gonna Sink.

Now I’m Just Standing Here On The Conveyor. Along For The Ride. I Reach The End, Turn Around, And Go Back The Other Way. The World Has Been Distilled. Being Dead Is Easy. After A Few Hours Of This, I Notice A Female On The Opposite Conveyor. She Doesn’t Lurch Or Groan Like Most Of Us. Her Head Just Lolls From Side To Side. I Like That About Her. That She Doesn’t Lurch Or Groan. I Catch Her Eye And Stare At Her.

It's More Eerie To Be Alone In A City That's Lit Up And Functioning Than One That's A Tomb. If Everything Were Silent, One Could Almost Pretend To Be In Nature. A Forest. A Meadow. Crickets And Birdsong. But The Corpse Of Civilization Is As Restless As The Creatures That Now Roam The Graveyards.

Enough White Lies Can Scorch The Earth Black.

Deep Under Our Feet The Earth Holds Its Molten Breath, While The Bones Of Countless Generations Watch Us And Wait.

Can We Really Choose Anything?' 'maybe. If We Want To Bad Enough.

How Do I Appear Unthreatening When Her Lover's Blood Is Running Down My Chin?

It’s Not About Keeping Up The Population, It’s About Passing On Who We Are And What We've Learned, So Things Keep Going. So We Don’t Just End.

One Mistake, One Brief Lapse Of My New Found Judgement-that's All It Took To Unravel Everything. What A Massive Responsibility, Being A Moral Creature.

The Shadows Of The Room Pool In The Lines Of Our Faces, Draining Our Eyes Of Hue. "there's Nothing Left Worth Saying.

I Want To Change My Punctuation. I Long For Exclamation Marks, But I'm Drowning In Ellipses.

Exclamation Marks

Punctuation Marks

I'm Not A General Or A Colonel Or A Builder Of Cities. I'm Just A Corpse Who Wants Not To Be.

Here It Comes. My Inevitable Death, Ignoring Me All Those Years When I Wished For It Daily, Arriving Only After I've Decided I Want To Live Forever.

Inevitable Death

Sometimes It's A Struggle To Live In The Moment.

Live In The Moment

Every Experience, Good Or Bad, Is A Priceless Collector's Item.

There Is No Ideal World For You To Wait Around For. The World Is Always Just What It Is Now, And It's Up To You How You Respond To It.

Music? Music Is Life! It’s Physical Emotion - You Can Touch It! It’s Neon Ecto-energy Sucked Out Of Spirits And Switched Into Sound Waves For Your Ears To Swallow. Are You Telling Me, What, That It’s Boring? You Don’t Have Time For It?

But We Don’t Remember Those Lives. We Can’t Read Our Diaries.’ ‘it Doesn’t Matter. We Are Where We Are, However We Got Here. What Matters Is Where We Go Next.’ ‘but Can We Choose That?’ ‘i Don’t Know.’ ‘we’re Dead. Can We Really Choose Anything?’ ‘maybe. If We Want To Bad Enough.

Soft Flesh Is Eaten By Hard Teeth.

And Yet ... But What If ... I Want To Do Something Impossible. Something Astounding And Unheard Of. I Want To Scrub The Moss Off The Space Shuttle And Fly Julie To The Moon And Colonise It, Or Float A Capsized Cruise Ship To Some Distant Island Where No One Will Protest Us, Or Just Harness The Magic That Brings Me Into The Brains Of The Living And Use It To Bring Julie Into Mine, Because It's Warm In Here, It's Quiet And Lovely, And In Here We Aren't An Absurd Juxtaposition, We Are Perfect.

Once You've Arrived At The End Of The World, It Hardly Matters Which Route You Took.

Last Winter, When So Many Living Joined The Dead And Our Prey Became Scarce, I Watched Some Of My Friends Become Full-dead. The Transition Was Undramatic. They Just Slowed Down, Then Stopped, And After A While I Realised They Were Corpses. It Disquieted Me At First, But It’s Against Etiquette To Notice When One Of Us Dies. I Distracted Myself With Some Groaning.

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