I AM THE OCEAN TONIGHT AND YOU ARE A GREAT DISTANCE ❋ Johnny Kiosk

i am starting to feel something resembling a fierce desire to move away from myself at lightspeed toward a cold silent massive void

i am typing my emotions aloud on a personal computer

there is something starting to resemble someone that you’d rather be with and it is at an unbearable distance

but you are typing your emotions onto a touchscreen phone

to be sent hundreds of miles onto another touchscreen phone

in a three second attempt to express something life changing to someone

now you are accelerating toward the infinite destructive centre of time

and you feel like a vase shattering in slow motion

as a cat watches from the window sill

briefly

before returning its gaze out the window to stare at a tree

your phone is making sad motions in your pocket

your phone is yearning to be in one of the places where it sends its texts

you are telling yourself to walk three miles

so if you are ever in love again

your body may be able to express itself gracefully

as someone you don’t know currently presses their face against your face

late at night

in a queen sized bed

before you go to sleep

and then wake up thinking about death and eternity

and the world-collapsing feeling in the chest

the world-collapsing feeling in the arms

the world-collapsing feeling behind the eyes

in the temples

in the fingernails

at the base of the spine

in the brain

the flesh

the blood the marrow

that you will be alone again

and probably all love fades

this is your decision

as you lie there sleepless

beside somebody dreaming and vacant

who told you your eyes were lovely

and whose body silently and beautifully lied to you and said things won’t become banal

and now you are starting to feel like you’d rather not be in existence

but there’s not much you can do to change that

just slowly and irrevocably relinquishing parts of yourself

like a wilting flower

i am starting to feel like i should end this poem

i think this poem is not about me

but really it’s secretly about me

and all my emotional states can be represented on a 20″ monitor

or a touchscreen phone

and there is something i’m trying to say

i just don’t know what it is

it’s there

on the tip of the tongue

an ember lodged in the brain

a cold desolate wind in the ribcage

a feeling of general shittiness and muted despair somewhere in the cardiovascular system

i am starting to feel it is safer from an existential standpoint to be away from my computer

this is the place where my emotions assail me

my computer weaponises my emotions and turns them into poems so they can attack me at a later point in time

the body is a vase to be filled with the fetid waters of sorrow and dying flowers

or something metaphorical

something very ancient found only in scraps of untranslated poems

something very ancient that ignites the heart fills the brain seething with the infinite desolation of unbounded longing and makes the eyes flash with the wrath of heaven

the sinews fill up with yearning

something cosmic and eternal

that finds temporal expression through your actions and desires

i am starting to feel like the entire ocean if it evaporated and i am all the dying sea creatures

and the sun is my enemy and it licks the slimy surfaces of my eyes evaporating any moisture that could serve as a fleeting reminder of the ocean

and i am gasping for air or water because i have gills and i am not ready to die

i have billions of gills because i am the totality of all sea life

and the empty ocean

and the mountains that are collapsing in on themselves

and tectonic shifts

and whirlwinds

and blizzards

and category five hurricanes

and tsunamis

and avalanches

and volcanic eruptions

and new natural disasters

previously unimaginable natural disasters

and insane deathless creatures from religious texts

and i have a billion eyes

and everything i see hurts

and i cannot look away

and i am staring into the infinite destructive centre of time

and everyone is collapsing in on themselves

leaving scattered flecks of skin

and fingernails

and hair

and ribcages

and fragments of skull

and a cat that sits alone in a window sill

watching the end of the world feeling indifferent and disinterested

turning away from the collapse of the last tree on earth to lick its paw

and now i feel like i am moving away from myself

at the rate of every poem i’ve ever written is secretly about you

and your eyes will never see any of them

and i am becoming a secret that is trapped inside the void of its own mouthless existence

and wants nothing more than to be told

in the middle of the night

from one lover to another

hoping in the moment of telling to outlast death and eternity

and vanish in a flash like the oceans during a supernova

and my cellphone is a little closer to me tonight

but you are farther away

you are farther away

and i am a dried ocean