Thursday, December 22, 2011

Early morning lessons

A squatter's life goes until 5 in the morning. It doesn't sleep much, it listens for rats and mice in the dark. The life tries to stay as far away from knowledge as possible.

When you're somewhere between state lines and you have delusions of grandeur, I hope you'll think of the sky, because it sees you as much as you see it.

The night sometimes wants a bit of space, so it pushes everything away with gentle breezes. And onto the next place you should go. Don't mistake its politeness.

In between pieces of gravel there are pieces of smaller gravel, and those pieces disjuncture to make gaps that whisper fire's crackle in light and dark. You can hear them if you want, but they only sound when made to; they're phantasmal.

When your lover one day takes her brittle arms and wraps them onto the railing of a train, kicking one leg up, and chanting incantations, you should gather distance. The sight is perfection.

If your pupils don't dawdle long I fear I'll assume the worst. They should constrict and elaborate something of your solitude.

When the gravel under the train speaks you'll feel more than see your nightly lover parting, but that feeling will be numb, and especially frozen at 5 am in the squatter's palace. 

Sunday, December 18, 2011

Romantics and their deaths (Part 1)

How would you like to die?

Dinesh sits with his eyes closed. With a deep exhale he begins.
"Crossing the street I reach inside of my pockets, into the corners and around the wallet, the pencil, the notepad, in search of my lighter. My lighter is lodged between the wallet and the pad. My footsteps crunch through the snow and all I can envision is the satisfaction of the deep clouds of toxin smoke. My pack of cigarettes are wedged between my chin and collar bone and the pressure feels good.There is a car coming, a bit too far to acknowledge. I pause for a second adjusting the cigarettes to relieve the pain beginning under the corners of one the box's sides. As the box falls into the perfect spot my middle finger realizes it has met the lighter, and I take the step into the street. "

"Boom dead. I'm dead now. The driver realizes what he or she has done (it doesn't matter) and cries, and my blood drips done until it soaks the lighter and mixes with the fluid inside. "


The wallpaper of the room stops the diffusion of smoke into the exterior that the romantics do not recognize. Four chairs sit circling a table used only to carry the ash tray that sits atop . A candy cane has been dispensed to the four romantics as they recall and recount and re-imagine their lives with respect to a question.

"Well, hmm. I'm not sure. Maybe, maybe... Wait, I've got it, why don't you stand up for a second? Let me just illustrate it." Steven stands and haltingly waves his arms for the three to arise. "Here! You stand here...and Ellen, you stand directly behind Nora, but be nonchalant. Don't think about Nora; she doesn't exist, okay? Pulling arms and pushing backs, he arranges the three into solidly relaxed positions with Nora's head tilted slightly upward, and Dinesh with his pinky tapping his side.

"Yes, I'd stand directly in front of you\, he says pointing to Dinesh."

"Why? I don't understand. Is this how you'd like to die? Is this it? Waiting in some line?"

"Yes, yes it is. We're in the checkout line, at Macy's and not just Macy's, but Macy's in New York City. I've never been to that one. At the head of the line, just as someone, someone who doesn't matter and might be walking away, is leaving the line, I begin to make look all around. My heart is exploding, the register-lady asks me to step up to the counter. I do. I do, but I can feel my heart just thumping away. Thumpthumpthump, thumpthump...thump. My eye'll bulge and fix on her eyes, and she'll think I'm mad and glance at Dinesh for help. His fingers will stop thumping, my breath will release, Nora, beginning to notice, will take a step forward in the woman's defense, and Dinesh will hear Nora's step and look back, causing Nora to look back, and everyone will be looking at everyone else as I falter and die. I'll die with and without everyone! My head will lay where so many feet have, and my pinky will touch my side. Dinesh will notice while they are screaming and calling 911. The store will stop and then after the numbers are punched, everyone will relax, and everyone will pay for their picks, because some are on sale. "

Nora goes to the window to lift it, making a gap between it and the sill. She reflects on the communication, the distance, the unity. She thinks "the window is unified, the parts are not." A gust torrents through, hitting the four and prompting them to retake their seats. Each stands before their respective chair and after they have all arrived they sit in unison. They make eye contact with one other and shift it around, hoping to ensure they are all together. 

Thursday, December 8, 2011

Achinprop

Hello there,

I'm looking for something that will prop my chin up when I walk.

I've tried hair weights

lined up on the back of my head,

they just hurt my neck.

I drew the American flag on the tips of my shoes,

I just became nationalistic.

I tried really hard to look forward,

but I can only look down.

I need something...

What'll it be?

A helmet that keeps my head in place? Something big? Something elaborate?

Please help me prop my chin up,

I can't go on like this.



Thursday, December 1, 2011

Cleavage


Somewhere in the sweet supple breasts of Lisa I can see ghettos of microbes huddling together, smoking crack pipes, calling out for some god to take those pale mountains in palm and squeeze them together. In her ghetto are my eyes, watching her dinge and grime barely covered by some grey blouse from K-Mart. Her arm crosses her torso and her neck stretches out while her head cranes into her shoulder.  In that moment I believe she has come from that ghetto on her chest—she has somehow ascended it, but barely, growing out of insignificance and into its representative. Giant microbial being—I deem her, and she smiles one of those smiles that lets you know shes uncomfortable and waiting for something to happen. Meanwhile, in the ghettos, a young microbe lies in Main Street and dies as she scratches her cleavage.

Monday, November 21, 2011

Wednesday, November 16, 2011

The Bathroom Stall


The word is large. A bathroom stall is small. Whilst out in the world, trodding and plodding like we all do, there are many actors at play, many rituals and norms that we all adhere to (barring certain extreme circumstances, namely Scarsdale). Occasionally, the universe shrinks and all outside your cranium is metaphysical. These are solitary moments with the self, when you assume that the outside world is functioning and moving along fine like it always is.

Today we shall focus on the revery of the bathroom stall. Sitting quietly atop a porcelain throne, one goes about his or her business. One sits in relative silence and is comforted by the fact that the procedure is endowed--to a large degree--with anonymity. One is encased within a shell, a very unique shell in which all that onlookers may ascertain about the inhabitant is the manner in which his/her feet are outfitted.

As a resident of Scarsdale, I see it as my duty--an unwavering one at that, which, if I do not do, I not only cease being Scarsdalean in every meaning and understanding of the term, but I also pose deep and concerning questions to myself about my purpose in life as a result of not adhering to a certain aspect of a life philosophy which dictates to a large degree my every action that I implement on the surface of this green Earth--to introduce chaos into the universe of an occupied bathroom stall.

"Crooooooo-wat!"

"Eeeeeeeer-wat!"

"Booooooo-knock!"

"WASP!"

"Raaaaaaaaaaaaw-swatch"

"Neeeeeeeeeeeee-loff"

"Booooooooooow-tock"

"NOSH"

I can scarcely imagine the thoughts and the confusion that this series of exclamations sets off in the universe of the bathroom stall which I am not a part of, but merely an anonymous inscrutable statistic in the metaphysical realm of the outside world that is in fact not part of the "stall universe," of which one lone person is an inhabitant of. All there is in response is resounding silence emanating from the stall. The Scarsdalean then leaves, vacating the innermost layer of the bustling, abstract humanity without.


Friday, November 11, 2011

Closing The Library

The sound of machinery hums, fills the void.
Every two minutes the grating sound of the minute hand scrapes its fraction of circumference, the other filler of The Friday Void.
8:29pm. In waddles manager and "The Library Closes in Thirty Minutes" in the same tone for years.
"Alright, flush 'em out."
I walk through the deserted building searching the crannies for patrons.
When I find one, you know what I say.
I say, "The Library Closes in 25 minutes," and they nod.
Sometimes I amuse myself.
"The Library Will be Closing In T-minus Twenty minutes. I repeat, The Library Will be Closing In T-minus Twenty Minutes."
My voice booms through a wide open room.The only way I can accurately describe this is to say that I state the fact in a similar manner to the New York Lotto Mega Jackpot man, and I chuckle.
I get annoyed when patrons are still in the library after Nine O'clock, the official closing time.
For instance, today at 9:02pm there was a girl in the computer lab, just sitting.
"The Library Closed Two Minutes Ago," I state with force. "Get out," I want to say.
So she gets out. It takes very little prodding, but still, get out before Nine. Come on.
I forgot to mention the bells. 30 Minutes, 15 Minutes, and 5 Minutes prior to closing time we sound the bells.
They are loud and occasionally I have a manager on board that delves deeply into the realm of Schadenfreude; he sounds the bells just a bit too long, potentially piercing patrons' tempanic membranes.
And we laugh.
And so the library closes on a Friday Night.
And so it goes.




Saturday, November 5, 2011

The 5th of November

Warning: This will be apathetic, badly written, and who gives a fuck. It's the 5th.

I will remember the 5th of November. It will haunt me for the rest of my life. When I'm in the kitchen with some baby crying in the other room (assumed to be mine) I will remember it.

Today my brain awoke with what had to be a hemorrhage. I thought what might help this pain that reaches down under my spine and squeezes a few clumps of some crap inside of me, some crap that is me. Snorty. I remembered the 5th just as it happened to me. I went online and read "remember the 5th of November." Years ago it told me "he died." Snort snort snort snort.

Well last night I went out and crabbed a few bottles of something and mixed a few tablets of something and yelled at some silly hats or something. Infinity boy would have had a chuckle; fuck you if you wouldn't. A hearty two weeks late on a paper, and a grand ole shit ton of coke will be waiting on a table in some house of a few ol' pals tonight. Somewhere or something or whatnot there is a girl with Yates tat'ed to her ass and it makes me remember the 5th. I have my right to silence but I deny it. I deny it once and for all because that's what we who remember do. Time stopped, died, and had its hands shrivel on the 5; we're in no rush to awaken it.

There is a tumbling rocky crevice in the straight jaws of Scarsdale. It was founded after the 1st 5th. It was founded on tenets or something, but I guess probably not. This day is a reminder of apathy. If I could just...if I could just stop caring then the 5th would never repeat.

If for every year you graphed the level of pathetic you saw in our lives you would be sure to...shit, I don't even care to finish that sentence.

If the women who sometimes sleep in my bed knew that I just copied what I thought he might do...

When your head burns and your belly sends you running and the room is too dark to illuminate I am laughing. I don't want to laugh, I want to cry, "How can this be humanity?"

It was always a story of love. That's important. There's a girl I love, she doesn't love me. But I'm not supposed to remember that on the 5th.

Take advantage of me...please. Show me how much I can give. It's in the spirit. Rip me off, ruin my house, slap me and kiss me until I bleed. Do what you will, just bear with me on the 5th.

The roads of the country are inappropriate for today and please excuse my blaphemy, because I can't stop thinking of them. There's a tire mark on my chest. We should be in a top 5 saddest city and we should be clutching blue moons. It's important. We should have blue baths on the moon until our skin is saturated.


Oh, O, ohhhh. Mmm yes. Sam? UGHH. Caramel banquet. NAAmmmm. Jimmy Ribbon belly dance? Gimme, gimme, gimmicky signs of go. Ni! Knights that go...Home-run walk on a crotch. Blappy-kimmel sundance fest. Days of insanity pass with my chances to change. Remember. The titans?

Fudge. No. FUCKKKK. Fuck. Fuck everything.

Wednesday, November 2, 2011

Pen pal

Mongol,

Hey! Hi there! How are ya? I'm good, just studying for exams and stuff. How is Mongolia? I must admit that I know very little about it--except for its precise location in Asia (I used to play the game Risk a lot (Risk is a game in which the players are invited to attempt world domination (if they can (matter of fact, might be right up you alley! You should check it out.)))) Also, I heard that you guys were in control of Russia for like hundreds of years. That's pretty impressive. But, like what's goodi anyways? Genghis Khan. You like Genghis?

Let me know.

Love,

Renaud 

Monday, October 31, 2011

November Guest Posts


Halloween

i've been living in filth ever since you left
because if i wash the sheets then i lose your scent
there’s an empty space where your body used to be
and the ghost of you won’t let me sleep
every day has been like halloween
the wolves just won't stop howling at me
the heart in my skeleton misses every beat
the flames of the devil are at my feet
and death is at my door

Thomas Pynchon Chronicles I


Come out, young crab, come out. I am in the place that no longer gets to see you.

You have alienated the masses. You turned "us" into "a." So complex you are, eh?

Come out, come out. Unless you're caught in a snag.

The search for The Golden Fag continues.

Monday, October 17, 2011

Gabby

We like to laugh stringy word taffy
On a cobblestone with debatable falling rain,
Our faces contorting viciously
For a Wal-Mart bicycle falling to pieces.

Our conversation’s lease has been extended
Because when we ponder we search
Through many tongue dances and waltzes
On the hunt for meaning
Taking place somewhere between our vibrant jaws


Huntress pulls the sword from the rock
And we rediscover wheels forged at birth
During divorces and hurricanes and deaths
And “Why are we here?”
Tumbles through a break in a sentence
So we fall with it.

The trickling rain is now true
Until we deny the truth,
That has fallen out of favor.

We are lies.
And as I imagine you with me and wanting
Being oscillates under nothingness--
And is it hailing now?

Giggle factory, laugh riot, sun-kissed sound
Begins while I wonder how we can be in multiple states:
You, in search; me, in wait
Always waiting
For a special word union.

We have known of this proverb of the proverbial discontent,
Of two youths standing around in wait of an ideology
To shoot and kill and bring back for the feasting of more flashing teeth.

Gabby, I will serve you dinner, 
How does Friday sound?
Yes.

We will speak as usual,
Turning capitalized ideas into baguettes
And me into cut and chewed goat cheese.

As knowing and nothingness resonate with our beings.
We will shake and collapse
And be devoured,

Until we realize it's snowing.

Wednesday, October 5, 2011

Esquire 78


A guy walks up to me. He is the father of a girl I went to high school with. He always makes snide jokes about marijuana when he sees me, as if he has more than a sneaking suspicion that I am an arsonist; a chronic partaker in the burning of tetra hydro cannabinol. It offends me every single time he does it, but I never say anything.

“So, how’re things over in Ithaca?

“Fuck you Mr. George.”

Friday, September 23, 2011

September (Guest Posts)

Nuclear Sun
A Gyre to geld my baby in any which way
To maim my offspring in any season
A crime, though posh, a crime.
To venture to harm my baby,
Enterprising to injure my child,
Is to re-do it all, all your work in life,
Like coming back in a circle to the beginning.
That state where it’s all dicey.
No clothes, no money, no wares.
That stage before you were a baby, all dark
To touch my child is a gyre.
My child is my throne, my sword, my wares,
Entire life earnings for his arrival and triumph,
Upheaval of his ascendancy would cause brouhaha
Like that of the explosion of a nuclear sun.
Your existence would come full circle
Don’t trip my baby’s angel hurdles
I’ve tried and failed and not for naught
A kinglike throne of legal tender shines with the energy, awaits,
Grant me a boon and harass elsewhere
Or stay and introduce yourself to my fist, your terminus,
Punctuated with interrobangs.
To disturb my baby is to plunge yourself in the unforgiving star
The fierce mental ignition at the start and finish, Gyre.

Tuesday, September 20, 2011

Economics


I have this theory. This theory involves a little bit of Economics. Bear with me.

I've begun measuring masculinity in terms of deadweight loss to society. Deadweight loss to society of course meaning dead time in this case. Like in a football match there are all those seconds that are devoted to a trot, a swagger, an over-the-shooulder glance, and no game. The same thing happens with people of course. Quotidian vaults of dead seconds amass and I'm becoming more and more keenly aware of their presence. I am attempting to suss out the facts and determine the root causes. Here's one:

Excess masculinity leads to deadweight loss to society. How?

Well, I am defining masculinity here to be a lack of consideration for others coupled with a heightened sense of aloofness/obliviousness.

What's interesting is that you find a lot of masculinity in Economics lectures-- especially in large ones. For an individual that sits near the front of a lecture hall it takes an astounding amount of manuevering, pleading, and general squirrely-ness to exit near the back of the lecture hall. Pretty many conversations such as these impede such individuals from moving along their desired path at their desired speed:

"Yaoooo. Where you gettin lunch at?"
*scratches stomach, yawns* "I don't know man."
"Cascadeli?"
*looks around, fixes hat* "Sure."
*yawns, scratches, sways.* "We out."

All the while the future head of the IMF is standing behind the towering individuals, poking his head around the pair looking for an alternate route and stammering something inaudible to them.

Frequently adorning the aisles are large individuals that simply stand. No conversation is taking place, but it appears as though the map of the day, or the schedule of the day, rather, is flashing through the mind of the large individual. He holds fast to the straps of his backpack, arches his back, and he contemplatively examines the ceiling. This man is a major obstacle in the aisle and he takes no notice of the individuals quickly becoming congestion behind his back.

What I find interesting here is to think of the rapidly expanding conglomeration of dead seconds. Say there are 15 individuals angrily jammed into place behind the large, ponderous man. Each of those individuals loses 10 seconds. That is a net loss of 150 seconds to society due to the sheer and complete obliviousness of the planning man. Imagine that similar occurences (dialogues and musing men) happen thrice in one exit. That's 450 dead seconds.  This lecture meets three times per week. That's 1,350 seconds per week. 14 week semesters? 18,900 seconds. 315 minutes of cost imposed upon the individuals forgotten behind the back. And, imagine that this happens in two classes! And, imagine that this happens elsewhere--in dining halls, libraries, on the sidewalks, in financial aid offices! Then, in the real world (post offices, blah, etc...)!

Quite a hefty sum of seconds quickly becomes lost to everyday tasks and general joy that one could and should be partaking in.

There are a few simple steps I take in order to mitigate this externality:

1) rudeness: if you value and understand the sheer weight of these numbers and think about it, you, much like myself, might begin simply shouting at people instead of allowing them to partake in the absent minded reveries of a sleepy afternoon, morning, whenever. When I see a large ponderous man I don't timidly beg him pardon, I demand pardon. "EXCUSE YOU" becomes an important phrase in my arsenal. Normally, such things impose social costs upon you. You don't want to be perceived as a rude person, correct? Well, that is only because you are not rationally thinking about the costs that the individual is imposing upon you. When you think about it in a larger context, perhaps you may get angry.

2) finger snapping: When I see a person about to veer off in front of me in a hallway and place an unwarranted and unsolicited damper on my original pace, I snap my fingers. Loud. Multiple times. Then, they look and see what is happening, and my trot takes precedence.

I suppose what must happen is you fight aloofness and obliviousness (which I have defined as masculinity) with an overpowering masculinity. You must not care about the social costs of being a rude person. Actually, you must revel in it. You must maliciously grin as you plow your way through conversation upon conversation about food and crazy weekends. You must hold your net high and collect those seconds that so rightly belong to you and put them to use!!!!

Tiocfaidh ar la!

Sunday, September 18, 2011

Swordfish

At the table I was adrift in the sea of gentle delicacies on the plate and palates of the dinner guests. "Ayn Rand was a genuis!" Person 3.0 says under his assortment of fine cheeses and crumbly bread. Their shirts are buttoned and collared; the lights are dim--ominous. In my silence I look for their eyes to question my placement at the table. They are physicists, they are lawyers, they are mystics and wise in their ether-reality. The lights go dimmer and person 1.2 gives a toast to the marriage that I knew nothing of— that is, until the toast. I look down at my plate of swordfish encircled with a granular sauce that is green and smells or tastes like life itself. I've never tasted this before. The toast ends and I look back up.

They eat, they pay; I walk in observation back to the train with the lingering feelings of firm handshakes and "It was my pleasure"s all around. And then I am there. I am back at my college, I am playing an invented drinking game; I am losing, badly. The swordfish for dinner makes my tummy rumble and the game makes my head come out of my belly then throw the ping pong ball. The college seniors gather around ye flattened table with litters of cups and gallons of liquor and scream and play and play; we are in a state of play.

"The best game since Pong!"
"No it's way better than Pong. Pong is pussy shit compared to this!"
"You're right, what am I saying? Drink that rum dude, you lost!"

Hahas, many hahas, circumnavigate my ear and eye and pink finger that stretches and points to the table. The light is there and not, and is anything really happening in those heads or in my cup? Who said that stuff? What is this game?

And I am there. I am being kicked out of an on campus party, because of the RAs, and making arrangements to pick up cocaine, though I don't snort cocaine and have only the exact amount the dealer has named as his price. He speaks terms and weights and I nod and invite him out to a party. His little neck bends downward and to the right then the left and avoids my little eyes. It is as if his profession has made him "sketchy" as if he is hoping to avoid a police sketch and is wiggling away slowly and gently from a fate that is destined.

We are there; we are...at a sophomore dorm on a bed. I have her in my arms and he lies in front of her, sleeping sleepy sleeps. This “her” and this “he” are illusory. They walked with me, they took me back to “his” place and he dreams now as she grins.

"You have a boyfriend and I am a spoon. I am a tool. Use me, whatever."
"You're the big spoon; I'm the little spoon." She says with her raspy voice, her person 0.85 voice. Her words barely come to me, they nearly get lost in some scene three years or five minutes ago.

"That isn't what I mean. Come here." I don't resist the time before now, I go to it, and as my lips push onto hers I think about the swordfish and the growling of my stomach.
"What do you want?" Persona 0.85 asks--vowels withering and body squirming.
"I don't want anything."

There I am, right there, on the walk home with the dawn squirting water onto my squeaky shoes and I spot two boys walking, smoking, walking, looking down.

"Hey, hey! Can I buy a cigarette?" I ask pulling out a condom.
"No." Person 0.3 says to me.

I stand still watching them walk away through a spinning world.

The grass palms my head and the sky pushes clouds steadily to death like the snows of yesteryear. I am, or turn into, the day before when I sent her, my swordfish, my love. And she, my world traveler said nothing. She says nothing. She is my nothing. Person 0.0 slept in the grass, and person 0.0 went to the womb then the tomb then to class thinking about the swordfish. And the days repeated.

The phone dialed, the phone hung up, the phone dialed and shut, and voicemailed once more at class or in the grass or somewhere in that night two years ago. Two years ago, I had swordfish for the first time. This cyclic progression of scenes leads me to the painful admittance that has to burst, has to erupt one day soon. “I don't want anything!” I will eternally, politely want to scream to my swordfish, but I cannot. And the days repeated.

Sunday, September 11, 2011

A page in the newspaper

Heat rising in those glossy wooden eyes
perpetuates this era on the stoop
for the day, or the year, the iris is eternal in words,
and "stoop kids never leave the stoop"
We should say, but don't
and the wood creaks
under the cores of endless rambling nouns, adjectives
verbs; we are static
and buzzing

While the maggots amongst the commas
Run-on to new domains that neither of us are aware of.

Come back.

"He died"
you say before I say
with the resonating giggle of the preceding  paragraphs
But the words float away from the oak
and there's another creak.

Stoop kids never leave the stoop.
We sit for moments that are eons
with thoughts that are pictures
of obituaries
and we smile, hoping to bring back
the giggles from the past few pages.

Wednesday, September 7, 2011

Gap Tooth Grin


From the looks of it I can surmise:
A toothpick was wedged real hard inside,

Divorcing those chiclets all pearly and white
Leaving grotesque that uncomely sight.

Lawrence Fishburne never did see...
A space so wide, unfettered, and free.

Some, I suppose, may name me a dick,
but through that gap Charlie Brown could kick

A prolate spheroid all swaddled in pig--
Under the mast posts this fucker does a jig.

Sidewalk trenches can't compare!
To this slice of thick, pure air!

Continental Drift made continents flow
but the Pacific is sad, seeing how this gap grows.

It's Zeno's paradox, perhaps in reverse,
To a postprandial pick he has become averse.

For, he knows all, and he knows why...
He knows the folly of a vigorous pry.

Perhaps Gimli's axe has split them asunder!
Or nature, that foe, made a grave blunder!

Either way, matters not, I think I shall quit.
This poem is as long as those chiclets are split.


--To my own soul I dedicate
--The first true work
--Of my life.




Poet in BK yada yada yada..

Do you ever feel like a paper bag?
So hollow, so deep...
With a fate entrusted to the
winds,
and death by aimless, leaden feet?

Ready to soar, soar, soar..
Ready to die, die, die..

A member of the Fall foliage?
Part of the debris.

Floating among the clouds?
Embedded in the street.

Do you ever feel like a paper bag?

Do you ever feel like a paper bag?


Tuesday, September 6, 2011

Fuck Poetry


Listen!

Enough of this poetry SHIT.
Who the fuck
ever
decided that dumb little lines
all fragmented
and s p a c e d out
in meaningful ways,
is an art form?
I, for one, am completely opposed to it all.
To long, skinny stanzas,
to supposedly beautiful comparisons,
to "new ways of seeing things."
Fuck it all.
Write some prose,
you
little
shit
stick.

With a hate more furious than all the Medeas of the world,
and with aspersions more weighty than all the dice cast
in sin city,
I spew vitriol into the leaden tomes of the supposed
Fore Fathers
of this great language
my tired lips
struggle to transmute.

You won't see me on street corners
reciting lines
of poetry
about
whatever the fuck
poetry likes to say.

bitch.



Monday, September 5, 2011

"5's on that chair"

My soul cooked the liver
baked the brain tissue
fried the remainder of the heart,
a serving juiced with drops of type O blood,
sprinkled with ethanol sweat,
and served at the Devil's empty chair.

The seat is still flaming, the town is too,
but the Devil is gone
on break
be back in five minutes
to move on from the appetizer--
the appetizer I'm so happy he ate first
and I wish he would digest quickly
I do. I wish.

I can still see his stomach lining
and almost through it
and at the disappointed glances of his dinner guests
But I was deliciously salty from tears
and crunchy.
Surely She thought me perfectly crunchy.
I had to be.

And from outside the guests' raw meninges
blood is dripping from the dinner table to their sandals.
Rare.
And they prettily exchange facts of the day
while someone snatches an early nibble
on my ear.
It would have tickled.
The Devil's empty chair looms at the end of the table
and everyone wonders what happened--
what happened to God's empty chair.
He didn't call 5's.

5: Reflections on the ground

I sold my banjo for beer and Raman
Fifty dollars for the granular crunch
that sticks between the teeth
reminding for days that it's uncooked
uncensored, unrequited desire.

But when I was five,
five, five. Five and smiling on jungle gyms
With sun sticking to my forehead
and dirt clinging to my socks
I walked past the cans and plastic wrappers
that today I grope for
and all the day I let memories of string sounds slip through
groggy wooden ears.
And at 5, everyday, walking home,
I listened to the bitter chords being struck.

I sold my banjo for beer cans and Raman bags
that now lay empty on my apartment floor
and the riffs aren't going, the floor not creaking from dance
in fact, it barely moves.

The floor doesn't sing songs to silent bodies or screaming souls
It's too noisy.

But when I was five they pounded and laughed--
Heavy sighs and crater sized cracks
But when I was five the strings set me off balance--
space-walk life with all the giggles loosely hanging off the sides
But when I was five!
But when I was five?
When I was five
I was a stupid little kid.

Sunday, September 4, 2011

Shit and Champagne


Broken bones under a leaden pallet
Under the shivering night’s curtain led me along
Down the chalk sidewalk
Into this spotty existence that came about when I met you

My spot is in the windowsill on the fourth floor
And below you stand and stare
Wondering what I’ll do,
If I’ll do.

And the crimson boiled skin from a night of five dollar beers
And ass grabbing—smacks
Still doesn’t make you think,

I want you to stop feeling.
I want to stop feeling.

“Naivete” you say, you said, you’ll say
I can see it in your eyes through the dark,
As your pores and teeth and perfection absorb me.

Now, Penelope,

Spotty vision taps my spine and tells it to spill
And I can almost see your face covered with specs of gray  and red
“You’re shit, I’m champagne.”
Period.
Exclamation?
No, period.

This leap of faith from the window sill was destined for the cyclical
Will you catch me one coffee date?
One afternoon at the beach, one internet moment, one hijacked plane?

Spinal tap, spotty boiling, red, gray
Gray gray gray
Filling the crevices of fingernails and eye-sockets and...
no time to see your skin,
you step back,
Nostalgia for the window sill moment.

Feeling, a life.

Saturday, September 3, 2011

ConLaw Kid (absorb)

The heavy bench beneath my buttocks keeps me from falling through for a moment. "So this is grounding," I think. "This is what I need." The clouds slowly wade over head into some shape I won't look at. I'm scared of the sight and sights in the sights, the textures in textures. What do I even mean?


A law student walks out of the Law Library, capital L, capital waiting at the end of a few hundred more of these walks he'll take to the dining hall then take to the graduation ceremony. I want to be his shoes. They're moist, because all law shoes are moist. The pressure makes the feet piss themselves, over and over again, until the toes are grandmothers and the shoes become Prada. I think I'll be their shoes one day, but today the bench keeps me grounded, or really, elevated above the ground. I like this state of being.

I wiggle my hat a little as the law student passes. "Spare change for a wealthy law student? Spare change!?" I have money and I always have. In a way I despise these people who want money. They don't know what it's like. They don't know how pathetic it is to be a predator searching for green papers to pay rent or debt, or some other silly concept. The student, in my ConLaw class, five foot seven, about 27 but with gray hairs, looks at me as if unsure as to what I said. He knows what I said. I yelled. it.

"Spare change for a wealthy man? Please suh can I have some moreeeee?!! Put your quarter or fifty in my hat, pleaseee."

"Um do you really need it?" The eyes twitch a bit and he looks back as if hoping to see an exit sign from the situation. None in sight.

"Need? Weird question. Do you not want to help? You see a fellow student asking for your hand to come and rescue them and you ask about need. I need this to happen. Please. Give it to me. Please, please, please, please."

I grab his eyes with mine and clutch them mercilessly, and he cannot look away, slither out of me. Come into this. Oh you're here.  His eyes begin to water a bit and I know those lids wish to close and block me out, let my bench absorb me, the sky collide into me, darkness. Nay say me.

"Okay, fine." He reaches into his wallet that is leather and slightly cracked and full of business cards from all of his prostituting. As he hands me a crisp twenty dollar bill I do my best to give him my most gracious smile: a mild smirk. I get his eyes again, and he backs away, quickly, back into the law library. Hit the books kid.

Saturday, August 27, 2011

These pictures of you


I’m dirt and grime. I take pictures of myself on the ground under some witty piece of cherished graffiti. I take pictures of myself hopping and leaping in mud on the cold nights of some drifty city somewhere, but in America only. She--my muse that is--, she is perfection, sweet elegance and she uploads pictures of her beauty in Milan, in Brazil, in Paris, and the straits of endless passes that only she can visit. Each photograph I put up stands in the utmost contrast to hers, and I know we’re both thinking of pictures. Which will we allow? Only the best of our worlds, and hers overpower any I could ever take. Her beautiful dresses hanging next to doctors and lawyers in some Indian city I could never name, and certainly could never think of going to. We picture our pictures’ lives and the people at their computers thinking about those lives, and we plan our facial movements in accordance, in perfection. The watchers eat them up, comment on them, mull them over; they’re really effected by them, or so we think as we wait through the few moments required to transfer a picture to the public’s eye.
            Those white and shining dresses she wears and flaunts on our mutual network are only mine. I devour them, vigilantly scouring for updates on a pose, a new pore I never noticed, a neck vein, a muscle in the leg, whatever is new. The only thing I need from her is the new. I need more clay and she needs more molding and we play, even if she doesn’t know of my eyes and my thoughts or of her leg muscle, neck vein, eyes, eyes, beautiful eyes, I know about them.
            No one has ever seen a picture of mine except for her. The typed words on the screen from some long non-existent person are purely fiction, a system edit. Every picture is for her; it couldn’t be any other way.

Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Enough Ithakas


don't ever want to sit
don't want to stare at the wall
under the words of some interesting little pet from the local college
don't want to move spit
just want to move calloused feet and bruised toes
to the west and wester 'til I’m all in a fret on a boat.
want to follow the ho chi minh trail
until I hit the bricks of town walks with gray and indigo colored people
I want to leave those and these nice weather people
Leave the nice words, nice clothes, nice person people
with a wink, a skip, and nothing of my essence.
I'll horde it all and they won't see my serious funny stupid puking eyes.
the beautiful women and the chuckling old men
the carrot eating bohemians, the African widowers
the world townies searching will search, or not,
But I want to walk into the oblivion of the lines on the road,
or at least into the center of the earth.

The gravel with give "it" up
I know it
I read it in a book,
or maybe just in between the cracks and crackling of a lunge forth as a kid
I want to walk until it's enough to walk
One day it'll be enough to just walk.

World townies will all go home
and eat dinner
and happy
they happy, and it's all they can do.

the mouths of the lines on the road are flat,
and they makes me a porcelain plate,
we're the same
and the crunching of the ground won't ever stop
until it's flattened
and the world is flat or round or neither
but regardless we're slipping into each other
discovering our edges and fondling our skins
and "it" hurts me and pulls me and throws me
like world townies do on Christmas eve at downtown bars and potlucks
like wild cat-woman dressed lovers do in yellow smoke back alleys
like crimson knights do to Boston groupies.
Pull skin back, grab flesh deeper, burn into and through.
the crunch of its flat mouth is all I need
I want to walk until it's not enough to run,
One day it'll be enough to walk.

Wednesday, August 17, 2011

Word documents


Kill the artists and call it Euthanasia
They've suffered long enough.
Paintings, pretty pictures, canvases,
And word documents
Won’t heal them.
So Kill the artists and call it Euthanasia
It's for the good of happiness--
That happiness covered with the wall's shade
Crouching in the corner,
It's suffering,
It's dying.
The paintings don't help long.
Look away for a moment, artists of the world,
Then you'll feel.
You're always feeling.
The sight isn't feeling.
The joy isn't feeling.
Look away
And see if you're still feeling
Or just hoping to stop.

Beautiful Toxicity

I thought about holding her hand too tightly. I thought about pain, maybe a little about ecstasy; sometimes they're the same, sometimes they don't exist. Most times there's just apathy, right? We sat facing the veranda and smoked it into waves, but it wasn't for the moment, so we relocated.

I change my mind so much, I change it over and over and I think of my mind in the same way I think of the piss stained couch maybe that soaked in my mom's house when I was a kid. We relocated to anywhere I wanted us to. King of her castle I was for a night or two, two years into the past and three drinks too many. Yes, my lips could cling to her gown. Yes, my hand could paint circles on her back. Yes, yes, yes! I wanted "yes" and who wants "no?" She said "yes," we wandered around a Wendy's parking lot. She said "yes" and we went to the most putrid smelling parking garage I could find.

"There's beauty in filth." I said to her with my serious eyes trying to get a serious feeling and failing. "But there isn't really, is there?" She said nothing and I kept talking and I wondered if even she thought she was there with me, smelling what had to be shit, sitting on a curve that had to be toxic, watching a blank street with no cars.  "This road is our canvas!" I said. A blank is not a blank canvas; it's sadder, more likely to provoke melancholy, and that it did. We were feeling sadness drape itself around us and we both hid under the same veil, apart. I'm not sure if I could say we were ever together. But my hand did touch her lap, and her smooth skin did glide, so smoothly, so obliviously, so-so.

She said "yeah," and "whatever" and "okay" and yada yada that eventually blends together, because they aren't words. Words express something, they signify, but there was nothing to signify and I might as well have been sitting with the sex doll my friends bought as a joke for me during Christmas of last year.

She was too beautiful with the Wendy's streetlamp bouncing a beautifully muddy light onto her cheeks as she looked forward, played with something in her purse, kicked a rock. "She should be a model!" I'd tell my friends both before and after "we." The idea of her extreme beauty knocked me off my feet. I wanted her to look into my shy eyes, cut me off in the middle of some silly rambling, and tell me I was beautiful and worthy.  I wanted to be worthy of her glance. I could prove I was interesting. I could prove I was good, whatever the fuck that means. "She's fucking beautiful," echoed in my ears and I couldn't hear the real world. I tried to hallucinate, but couldn't. O asylum! O escape! O this was the apex of drudgery.

I took her to the shitty sights this night. I let her walk in crap and rub her chilly arms, cover her nose, whatever. Even in the crap she was perfect, saying "yes" with not a touch of humanity. Picture that, the flies are buzzing around her mascara covered face and she's slapping them every other minute, and she can't say "Hey douche! Take me home!" She just sat, and I watched her and spoke, as if everything were in line. I spoke, she listened and her straightened eyelashes poked up while underneath somber ridden eyes peered through her purse. 

 "Let's leave." I smiled and she smiled back. Squealing and straining, dripping smelly drops onto the road, my car took us through the swaying red lights "GO, go, GO!" That's the life I wanted to live. That's the life we lived and still I didn't feel anything. Stopped on the sidewalk in front of her house I saw hair falling into her face. "It must be uncomfortable," I thought. It had to be. I took my little pointer finger and I poked her face then dragged it along until the hair was behind an ear. I could almost hear her saying I was beautiful just then, but the crickets outside were the only sound creeping into us. I went to kiss her and her lips tightened. Sitting back, always back, never forward, I guess, I was ready for us to sit there for eternity and my car to become oblivion and her face a statue to be admired and worshipped and cursed. I was ready for the blackness to settle in, but the streetlamps were still hitting the windshield.

I hit my steering wheel and the car awoke with a shout down the street, and her body came alive with a flinch of painful fear. Her eyes became heavy and she began to fall asleep. As she floated into dreams, I stayed in mine and let my eyes absorb her, until even the moving of her chest under the gentle breath of life seemed ancient, and she became my statue.