Grey Stories
select words, poems and prose
by j.Kemble 10

Remember when we were underage
We used to pick the scabs
Off of our legs?
We used to bleed
And sleep in bloody sheets,
If you pick your scabs
It will never heal.

FOOD POISENING
I get sick, and have to lie down. I can feel the blood flush out of my face in waves of nausea. I feel weak, and almost dead, as if I could die at any moment. I convulse, stomach acids and bile uncontrollably rip through both ends of my body, followed by tremors and dry heaves. My mind is intact to think sick thoughts.
“I’m sorry I ate it.” I think, as I lie on the hallway floor half naked. Only mumbles escape my lips, and the violence is upon my stomach again, I try to run to the bathroom, but can’t get up, so I throw my body, trying hopelessly to hold my guts in. I’m so tired, but I can’t sleep, so I pass out.

letdown
They say
You change when you drink,
Your eyes bleed alcohol
Out your pores into
Invisible misty rain…
The first factories
In the front of your head
Shut down.
That last pint was hard to get down,
And now so is this.

DON’T BE LATE
Sometimes I wake up
And look her in the face.
She keeps me up all night,
Talking rambling on for hours,
I want to tell her I love her
But I can’t.
She chains me down
And spends my money.
I could go on without her,
But I can’t.
I melt in her touch
And want to ride forever.
“Hurry up or you’ll miss the bus!”

CHEESE PUFF
I put the book down and fall into my milk.
A thick white dairy product womb surrounds me,
Drinking me down.
Bleached white sun the memories erupt from,
Cutting deep into my mind with sterile laser scalpel precision.
…Touches a nerve, and fires recall trigger.
From the comfort of my couch I mutter…

Walk with pride
My suicidal love
For you are everywhere;
You have not abandoned us.
I feel your strength
In the stories and rhymes,
Perhaps that’s all you are,
Myth.
Perhaps this is Coyote’s
Last trick.

RESUME’
His Lungs are drowning, gasping for air. He lights another cigarette, inhales, and blows the gray smoke from polluted lungs. “I’m dying.” He muses. Then looks around. Black pavement covers what was once pure, “Is this what I am inside? Irreparable?” He smiles at his girlfriend, then looks to the sky. Nothing but blue sky, forever, unbroken. “It tastes like candy and I can’t stop eating it.”
He lights another cigarette, inhales, and blows the gray smoke from polluted lungs. “I’m dying.” He muses, “And I can’t stop eating it.” He glances down at his shoes, new black shiny wood, so far down: six feet under.
“Love is like cigarettes and coffee.” He lights another cigarette, inhales and blows smoke from polluted lungs. “I’m dying.” He muses, and I can’t stop eating it.” He smiles at his girlfriend, and looks at his shoes.
“Everything is black.”