leatherbound-sketchbook

[leatherbound-sketchbook]

She moved through the world like a hagfish. Skin so loose nothing could get a hold of her, and anything that tried would get a mouthful of slime for its trouble. Of course, she was never caught in the fallout: she could tie herself in knots to scrape off her own offal as well as she could lace her boots. She feasted on the dregs, the coffee grounds left behind when the world had been brewed. No teeth, just a gullet and determined plates that could imitate a bite barely well enough to tear. She lived on the bottom, writhing in the muck, and loved it. I asked her once, how do you stay so shapeless? She didn’t respond. She never did. I only ever heard her speak when it was to clients. Her voice always reeked of cigarettes, and her lungs crackled like muscle fiber tearing whenever I got close enough to hear. I was always trying to get close enough to hear her heart, but I never could. She took everything from me, same as she did all the others. A fax or two, a half-dry Bic signature, a call to the bank, and it was down her throat. Scavengers are one of the only living things in this world that aren’t predators, only because they eat the defaulted. The table scraps. The ones who don’t need digesting to soften them up. I think I knew her name once, maybe a half-second after we met, but it slipped from me as quickly as it oozed into my brain. When life is one long intestine, names seem… superfluous. I knew her by smell, as I hope she knew me. Smoke, faded almost to nothing, and plain soap. She never used anything except bar soap, I imagined, to smell like that. I imagined a lot of things about her. I knew almost nothing. She wanted it that way, I imagined. I once tried to follow her home, only to find that she lived in one of the apartments above her offices. All rented. Ephemeral. Colorless. The curtains were white and always tied shut. I would have given anything to smell the smoke I was sure saturated them, to plunder her closet for every identical brown sweater she wore, to reach into her mouth and unravel that staticky voice, to get close enough to finally taste that slime. She was gone last week when I visited the offices. Nobody knew anything. I dream of smoking Bic pens in a muddy foyer every night now.

[leatherbound-sketchbook]

Sedentary

Oils build up.

Layers of ooze, forming films.

At the touch of cloth, they sneer

Cloud the glass, blurred smear

of body-weight and yellow whims.

Oils rot.

Chewed up by blankets of mold

spotting themselves in black and white

Furring the unmoving, the blight

crawls and festers in the threshold.

Oils smother.

Congealing into beads of fat,

Lard pocking the lungs like pus.

All is neglected, superfluous

Sinking, matted, a drowning rat.

Oils imprison.

Links of infinite molecular chains,

They tangle, clump and ensnare

Press on the lungs, strings of bloatware

Padlocked to the ankle, knotted reins.

[leatherbound-sketchbook]

Maladaptive (after Robert Bly)

It wants to fight.

She wants to run.

He wants to hide.

They want to stop.

Ze wants to cry.

Claws that aren’t there ache to tear.

Feet bounce with the plea to flee.

Hands flounder trying to cower.

Lungs wheeze as they beg to freeze.

Eyes shutter while flooding with water.

It and she and he and they and ze brace,

But there is nothing but the chasm of time

Distantly, the static in their billions-face

Swallows a primate’s mind.

[leatherbound-sketchbook]

String Theory

Massive metacosmic wheels spin the fabric of reality,

Turning & churning as they sing the Supernova,

Weaving threads of dancing waves

Strung with beads of matter & antimatter,

Spinning the wool of nebulae into

The silk, gold, polyester, cotton

That drape over the hyperreal,

Make it solid, make it mortal.

Ever-spinning wheel of electrons

Moves in five dimensions,

Casting the shadow of a cloud into our humble third.

Twirls round its axis with confidence only lent

To those unbound by the red tape of particle physics.

Axis remains steadfast, patient

As its whirligig neighbors pull the fibers of spacetime through it

& around it, wrapping it up like a toilet-paper mummy

Then all at once,

Letting go and clapping with mirth

As it pirouettes uncontrollably,

Spitting up beams of EM radiation.

None have seen the spinstress’s face,

Only the infinity of her hands,

But some have whispered that they’ve heard her voice,

And all swear that it crackles like a Geiger counter.

[leatherbound-sketchbook]

Europa

Plunge beneath miles-thick ice

Sheets frozen by void and time, a mock-crust

Beneath, sheltered, like magma, an ocean

Warmed by molten titan’s heart, salted and sugared

Infinity black, endless, a mirror behind frozen glass

Imperfect, lacking the lights that pinprick its muse

Lightless oasis, snowball of primordia, forever a distorted reflection

Until

Something squirms, something breathes

Something glows.

[leatherbound-sketchbook]

I wish my handshakes were neural

Sociality is the mother of longing.

Why do we tell stories of telepathy?

You know the answer, mammal-ant-bird-fish.

Skin is not enough.

Those that survived hungered for merging,

Pressed close against the cold,

Felt others like lost pieces and wished to fit together.

A game of chance, safety in numbers.

What prize did the winners birth?

You know this too, if you only look a little deeper.

Think of the nights you ache.

An absence forever present,

a presence forever absent.

The trees would laugh if they were anything like us.

Their roots know the joy we covet.

What sweet nothings does the mycelium whisper?

[leatherbound-sketchbook]

Ode to Sharks

Shark glides like a shuttlecraft

Orbiting Earth in the column of water that holds space at bay

With its formidable mock-void visage, one equally adorned with lights,

Which themselves descend from stars.

Liquid Atlas, seawater Prometheus, buoying sharp-mouthed daughters.

Shark sleeps with both eyes open, just like her cousins

Who writhe through water below and slither through sand above,

Filling themselves with the dregs of the ocean’s shield

And the smoke from the campfires of the seafloor’s grandchildren.

Shark’s gills are sleek, taut, picture of elegance

Breath noiseless and efficient,

slicing water like bread and licking off the butter.

Tail waves side-to-side in a languid roll;

She has all the time in the world.

She’s been catching her kid cousins between her teeth for half an eon,

Cutting her way through phylogeny as scales feathered & took flight.

She felt Chicxulub like a mountain feels a hurricane.

Shark knows the names of the diatoms,

Her skin echoes them in a duet.

Her teeth grow endless in the garden of her mouth,

Falling like ripe fruit to join the shells of her singing partners.

She bites what she does not understand; she yearns to taste the unknown.

Sometimes it tastes like plastic.

Mostly it tastes like bone.

Her hunger is what will remain of her, her jaw picked clean by her siblings.

Shark glides through the anti-void of the sea

As shuttlecraft glides through the true void of the sky,

But eventually they will meet:

Shark has already seen many of its siblings fall.

She has welcomed each one home.

[leatherbound-sketchbook]

Shipping Label

RETURN TO: A PLACE LONG PAST, A TIME FAR GONE, ASHPIT EGGSHELL RADIO-ANTENNA

SEND TO: SOL 3, SOL SYSTEM, MILKY WAY EARTH

WEIGHT: NOTHING

WEIGHT: PRESSURE ON THE HUMAN HEART RATED AS 12 NON-MAMMALIAN ROADKILL

WEIGHT: SUBTLE BUT UNDENIABLE

SHIP DATE: THE MOMENT SOMETHING FIRST SANG

SHIP DATE: ZERO

SHIP DATE: IT HAS ALWAYS BEEN HERE

LOT NUMBER: 299792458

LOT NUMBER: 6.022 x 10^23

LOT NUMBER: 1

FRAGILE! CONTAINS DEAD LIGHT! HANDLE WITH RESPECT!

SHIELD FROM THE MUCK OF GLOWING FILAMENTS

NO SIDE IS UP

IF OPENED UPON RECEIPT: PANIC

IF DAMAGED UPON RECEIPT: MOURN

IF EMPTY UPON RECEIPT: LOOK INWARD

NOT THE INTENDED RECIPIENT? YES YOU ARE

AFRAID? YOU SHOULD BE

LOST? IMPOSSIBLE

EYES MUST BE OPEN TO RECEIVE DELIVERY

ANY AND ALL LOVE MAY NOT BE RETURNED

TAKE SOLACE IN THE THIRD LAW

DELIVERY INSTRUCTIONS: LOOK OUT AND THINK OF DISTANCE DEATH DISSEMINATION RADIATION REFLECTION REMOTE CULMINATION

WHAT IF I DON’T WANT IT? THERE IS NO WANT

WHAT IF I RECEIVE IT WRONG? IT CAN ONLY BE RECEIVED

WHAT IF I AM IT? YOU ALWAYS HAVE BEEN

[leatherbound-sketchbook]

Little Ziylal doodle because we need more Ziylal art in the trek fandom

[leatherbound-sketchbook]

Image Description: A traditional pencil drawing of two people on a beach. The leftmost person is a Jem'Hadar wearing swim shorts patterned with puzzle pieces. Ze is smiling, and has a long scar over hir left eye. The person next to hir is an Aenar wearing a striped speedo. She is smiling widely and has his hand on the other's shoulder. He is covered in body hair, and has nipple and belly button piercings. Aer antennae are curved toward each other in an expression of love and happiness. Both characters are fat. The two both have tails, which are entwined between them. End ID.

My Star Trek OCs, Amitid'som (ze/hir) and Avyvoll (any) at a beach! Not pictured: Avyvoll having to get dunked in an ice bath and spending six hours in the full-body dermal regenerator after finding out the hard way what sunburn is. But it was xyr choice to wear a speedo to the beach with zero melanin, so.

[leatherbound-sketchbook]

Little doodle i felt like doing (please ignore the horrible anatomy or else i will Die)

[leatherbound-sketchbook]

Reverse Icarus

Isn't it funny

how we only remember part of Daedalus's warning–

"Do not fly too close to the sun, for it will melt your wings" - perhaps for our own reassurance.

Perhaps another Icarus, in another myth,

would have been so entranced with the beauty of the sea

its rich blackness, foamy whitecaps, beckoning depth,

that he would fly too low,

would wet his wings–

and, ironically–

fall to the arms of just what had ensnared his eye.

Isn't it funny

how Icarus rises so readily to the tongue when rich men drown in pursuit of thrill

yet when poor folk drown,

reflected in the eyes of a dozen unmoving coast guards,

no myth is prescribed to their lives

no grand tragedy of human foibles

when, indeed, Icarus himself was fleeing imprisonment?

Isn't it funny

how the sea holds so many of humanity's sins?

Ships, lost to hubris and warfare and luck,

Bodies, lost to adipocere and sharks and sediment,

Plastic, lost bastard child of an overbalanced tyrant,

Oil, lost grave of earthlings come before.

They say carbon emissions will turn the seas to acid

eating alive our neighbors and long-dead Icaruses alike.

Perhaps the ocean, then, is the great equalizer

She swallows billionaires and refugees all the same

And the way she's rising, well

She'll swallow us all in the end.

[leatherbound-sketchbook]

Self-Portrait as Biopsy

If I were to rend open my sternum and the congealed blood were to ooze out like dark syrup like it does in the movies would my heart finally beat clear?

Perhaps this ache is one that needs a wound to cure it, like a staph infection, lanced with a needle, or an excision, cutting the rot from the root.

Perhaps I am an infection after all; not on Earth, but in my body, electric virus in the brain, eating away at the organs.

My body, perfect machine, animal true, invaded by a presence it cannot hope to fight with its protein-water-salt war machines.

The enteric nervous system is called "the brain of the gut", and perhaps therein is where the confusion lay; tanks and bombs of macrophages and neutrophils trawled my intestines, instead of my brain.

Scorched Earth, burn out the infection, fever-sweat drowning the enemy, but they were off target; there was only the swelling of civilian casualties, the enemy was hiding in the telegraph wires.

The fight had never been one way; razor wire slashed at their soldiers and poison crept through the air, blockades starved cities and soldiers alike.

Perhaps this weight that sits behind my ribs is Me, in all my cancerous glory, finally cornered in this war of attrition. 

CPR almost always cracks the ribs, breaks the xyphoid process from the sternum, in pursuit of resuscitation.

Perhaps the splintering of my own ribcage could resuscitate my body, free it of the fever it has harbored for years.

If finally all that is Me bleeds out through my chest, will I be cured?

[leatherbound-sketchbook]

Decided to start posting my poetry here so here goes--

Carbohydrates

Amino acids, carbon & nitrogen, hydrogen & oxygen

Protein chains, sugar & salt, starches & vitamins

All protons on neutrons, electrons on atoms

Energy & chemicals & enzymes & peptides

Digestion & blood, sugar & fat

You're alive, you're alive, you're alive

Folds of your stomach, cells upon cells

Carbon on carbon on carbon, my dear

Patterned like snowflakes, woven like thread

Crystalline & fluid & patchwork & fibrous

Organelles & cytoplasm, ATP & DNA

Tapestry of life, infinitesimal, infinite

Evil's nowhere to be found here;

The only toxins lie with starvation–

Only flowers grow here.

Starches & sugar & fat & salt

You're alive, you're alive, you're alive–

Isn't it beautiful?

The pinch of soft 'round your middle, your subcutaneous tissue?

All carbon on carbon on carbon again

Health is in thriving, happiness in indulgence, my dear

The world's in the toast crumbs on your chin.

[leatherbound-sketchbook]

Image Description: A monochromatic acrylic painting of Sonequa Martin-Green in black and white. The painting is from the shoulders up, and she is facing right. She is wearing a feather boa and a black dress, and she is smiling slightly. End ID.

[leatherbound-sketchbook]

Image Description: A monochromatic acrylic painting of T'Pol from Star Trek Enterprise in shades of blue. It is from the shoulders up, and she is facing forward. End ID.

[leatherbound-sketchbook]

Take Your Daughter To Work Day was henceforth banned

[Image ID: A digital drawing of the NX-01's engine room. Trip Tucker is in the foreground kneeling next to a gray panel, fixing it with a glowing stick. Behind him, Elizabeth is attempting to climb out of a floating bassinet in pursuit of an anti-gravity ball. Travis is running toward her with a distressed expression. Trip is oblivious to this happening. End ID]