Last night I fell into a black hole of illusion blended with a litany of glittering promises. Promises I know will never be renewed. I fell into a temporary tomb that encased me, feeding me delicious morsels of secret truth from a silver spoon of lies. Feeding the mouth of the dead. Trying to resurrect past emotion, reminded of a story that in many ways seems artificially fashioned yet I know it to be true because it happened. I know because I recognize the blood on the wall as my own. I recognize the voice screaming out for water as my own. I recognize the cell around me as a vision from a past life I cannot escape. A glimpse of a life I can not take back. A walking nightmare. A dream that is all too real. I allow myself to drift through this porous memory wallowing in my inner gaze, bewildered by the haunting anguish that rips through my gut like the wind whips through trees, uprooting my foundation. A system of complexities whose fierce talons are sunk so deep there is no escape.
          The red witches are after me, wanting to see me crucified between two thieves. All is enchanted. Teen Witch and Dancing Queen have won and I must admit to my guilt and be banished forever. Out of the little yellow house on the corner of a street named after a state where the sun is always shining, out of the room where my heart first learned to sing, out of the city where the poor are rich and the rich are tortured souls. I descend the staircase of my youth manic, crazy, raving mad, a lunatic, frantically emerging into a world that has become a terrifying jungle and I am left to search for the Ghost who has stolen my heart, whose memory will not leave me until I have completed my full exorcism of writing it down. Even then he is gigantic and erect and when standing before me I want to put him in my mouth and shove him straight down to my heart where he can fester and grow and consume my body until I have become one with the hopeless romantics, acknowledging the hard reality, that the heartache remains, forever.
          Morality was never involved, nor was the fear of imprisonment, nor the fear of hell, rather the fear of living a hollow life under the oppression of rules and authority that drove me bound and gagged to my dark, sweet prison cell. How many times I cried out for Teen Witch with no response. The little girl queens encased in fantasy, trapped in the pages of a story book that will not let them go and Dancing Queen will dance forever young, forever beautiful as I have the pleasure of growing old alone.
          Jew, nigger, fag, witch. I want you all. All you mohammedan angels. All the cursed and the damned. Pimps, hoes, gangsters, thugs. Daughters of rape and violence. There is no terror in our tragedy only lost love pulled premature from tender loins. We grip each other fiercely, knowing we are all we have, knowing that our grip is a temporary vice on a world we can not control.
          Mariam my love, my blind murderer who held a knife to defend her virgin honor. Mariam, pregnant with a corpse, a cop killer, a fighter, a beautifully exotic Afghani rose, so fragrant with grief, so covered in thorns that have burnt her crimson cheeks and sharpened her poisoned tongue. Mariam, a solitary vision of the angelic beyond. She serves as a goddess for purpose of childish fulfillment, all prisoners being children searching for the divine. Mariam who laid with me at night reading aloud passages from the Koran, her holy text. I retain nothing but the memory of her heavenly voice illuminating our dark cell, richly draping the heavy stone walls as if in scarlet and miniver, creating a fortress for our weary souls. She promised me she would end her life if freed, and to avoid any confusion she diabolically kissed my parched lips, my fatal heroine, and caught me spellbound between her pagan hips. I greedily submit to such sordid affection, her mouth pressed to mine, tenderly devouring her embrace. I am hungry for love, a pilgrim come to worship at her feet. I sense her need for excitement expressed in a flittering heartbeat. Perversely she is mine if only for a moment.
          I am transported in memory to an alley where the Ghost held my hand while sifting through a garbage heap for discarded cardboard scraps. Certain details remain severely emblazoned in my mind while others fade and I find the memory of his memory push other men into focus and I am left with a very mixed-up version of what is true. I remember distinctly the fingers that are marked with black lines that delicately felt my soft breasts beneath a silk dress. I remember wondering what I had done to evoke such beauty. I naturally wanted him to love me and to arouse his admiration I invented an imaginary world in which we could live and kept it burning with the embers of images alive with travel, adventure, fornication, thefts, vandalism, imprisonments and every possibility of living such treacherous lives of and for each other alone, for the love of ourselves and the passion and boldness of living wildly for love. I remember not sleeping, wandering the streets because my daydreams were so vividly committed to repeating themselves twenty times over. I remember the exhausting pleasure of inventing circumstance. I remember sleeping in doorways, and upon waking I would continue my travel with him, carrying him off with me in my box of cherries, off to a life more real than the real one. I remember sitting barefoot in skid row, chalk in hand, mapping out a life of illusion, a memory that refuses to disappear. I remember realizing I was already a prisoner of my secret inner life, a prisoner within myself, condemned to wretchedness, swollen with desires that contorted my vision and manipulated reality. I called out to the Red Witches yet again. My life stood still, and yet all around me life continued to flow. I realized frantically that there are no bearings, no structure or foundation and came crashing down to the realization that my entire life had been a dream.
           An illegitimate child abandoned to the streets, prowling the underworld for enchantment, forgotten poetry, subterranean inspiration, and curious creations to mount like a stiff prick and have explode inside me, revealing every intricate facet of a life I can now call my own. Trespassing through profanities to discover, to create from these sacredly absurd explorations stories of resurrection from certain death. The Red Witch rising. Joan of Arc lost and found. I heard the voice of God spoken in a whisper from the mouth of a whore who shot dope in a dilapidated hotel on Mission Street, "The earth a formless void of darkness upon the face of the deep waters, the spirit moved across the water and there was light and it was good." It was good. The technicolor brilliance of her red lips moving toward mine. It was good. The feel of his giant cock between my legs. It was good. 600 dollars in ones. It was good. The white lines inhaled through dead presidents. It was good. The mundane heart pumping blood through dilated veins. It was good. The brass pole on a well lit stage. It was good. The hard on sequestered in your pants. It was good. The flow of words that pour from dancing fingertips. It was good. The panic of my manic heart. It was good.
          I can not imagine life without this Ghost, real or imagined, my heart races wildly for him, the world our playground, clumsily reaching for the black lined fingers that remain just beyond grasp. He will lead me straight to the gallows where I will gladly stick my neck out in numbness and fright, knowing we all must die. I can not help but want to live while I can. Death being no trivial matter, body and soul prey to darkness, the most secret parts exposed to rot and foul odor. How very morbid. I hope to die with dignity, but what difference does it make, just another dream that never ends, another black hole and endless void to fall into, forever enfolding into itself, unconcerned with my pointless communication of raw emotion, for your eyes only.