Happy one year my little blog. From the first post to now, you have been a warm lovable little wet spot on the carpet that I could always call my own. For the record, I would like to know how many of you had that social consternation kicked out of your throats? Hmm, bold first lines...
New year, new goals. I've worked love over pretty well, it gave me some aerobics. New year, my baby all growing up, just figuratively though, unlike the my real life. Gotta have something new, something fresh...
Monday, January 24, 2005
Tuesday, January 18, 2005
our anniversary
It’s January 7th, and somehow I expected things to be different. All the stars are aligned today you see, every planet in a straight course to my heart. Don’t you remember; it’s the one year anniversary of the time you picked that piece of shit law student over me for one scared lonely night of you life.
Its not that I’m upset, I just expected more from today. Maybe I expected to realize how silly it is to keep thinking about it, nonetheless marking its anniversary. Maybe to realize he was doing a favor by filling me with so much passion as he was filling you with semen. Perhaps just to be thankful that our wedding anniversary wasn’t close to the same day, that day that for so long was unmentionable in our lives together.
How did I celebrate? It was purely subconscious, but I can see it now.
I still don’t write in that side of my red notebook that we used to have together. The other side has so much scribbling, is filled nearly full of recollections; yet beyond that yellow divider sits our old and silly doodles , perhaps your inane illustration themed on getting you a diamond and making my kid to stop head butting you. Maybe keeping her as a nice Jewish lesbian while we were at it; to save us all a lot of trouble later in life. Those were our jokes, now my memories.
I remember sitting at your friend’s house and us all getting tipsy on raspberry vodka, everybody turning their eyes on us when you brought up the “rock”. I really though I meant it when I said soon enough. Everyone blushed. Us, just proud and in love…
Nobody knows that story down here. They just know haphazardly that it’s the seventh day of the New Year, and its ushering in all sorts of good stuff for us. Nobody asks me if I got you your ring yet, no one is disappointed when I say no.
It’s really all ok now. No regrets, nothing I can’t salvage, nothing left out in the rain with nobody to care for it. Your shoes fit in that plane ride back to hell, and I dragged mine behind a speeding vehicle.
What the fuck were we thinking kid? Now that everything is sorted out, and what I miss the most is the curiosity of another human being. It’s such a big new year though. It’s a new face, and new home, and a new piece of America to yell out to.
So congratulations, a toast to us!
It’s our anniversary,
You’ve hidden my keys,
This is one anniversary,
You’ll be spending with me.
Here is to a new chapter of my life, as this anniversary can likely be the split between separate types of existence. We were just kids at play when the whole thing started, and here I am giving it all much more air than it should have. Honestly, it was never important enough to devote a volume too. Just a lonely little girl in a new school; looking for someone to run his fingers through her hair, and hold her hand when she crossed the street. And what was not important, was us. We were a product of consumer desire, two objects brought onto the rack at inconvenient times; so much so that our space had no choice but to overlap and therefore conflict.
Wouldn’t I like to believe we found love at last, that we perpetuated all that human garbage of infidelity and detestable spirit in only the fear and inadequacy of ourselves? If only psychology were a science!
…
And today I washed down my vitamins with peppermint schnapps, mainly because it was the only thing at hand. Count four large vitamin E tablets. I heard the mixture as it met at the bottom of the lengthy slalom, and I made out their rather polite greetings.
Vitamin E, being a stately antioxidant, offered the first bit of conversation as he quipped “I haven’t quite seen you here before sir, have we been acquainted?”
Alcohol met the challenge with “Actually I come here often, though this schedule is a bit out of the ordinary.”
E said “True to that, I’m generally a morning person you see.”
They shook hands and went there separate yet identical ways; whilst I proceeded to sleep like a champ... This kid has got heart…
Its not that I’m upset, I just expected more from today. Maybe I expected to realize how silly it is to keep thinking about it, nonetheless marking its anniversary. Maybe to realize he was doing a favor by filling me with so much passion as he was filling you with semen. Perhaps just to be thankful that our wedding anniversary wasn’t close to the same day, that day that for so long was unmentionable in our lives together.
How did I celebrate? It was purely subconscious, but I can see it now.
I still don’t write in that side of my red notebook that we used to have together. The other side has so much scribbling, is filled nearly full of recollections; yet beyond that yellow divider sits our old and silly doodles , perhaps your inane illustration themed on getting you a diamond and making my kid to stop head butting you. Maybe keeping her as a nice Jewish lesbian while we were at it; to save us all a lot of trouble later in life. Those were our jokes, now my memories.
I remember sitting at your friend’s house and us all getting tipsy on raspberry vodka, everybody turning their eyes on us when you brought up the “rock”. I really though I meant it when I said soon enough. Everyone blushed. Us, just proud and in love…
Nobody knows that story down here. They just know haphazardly that it’s the seventh day of the New Year, and its ushering in all sorts of good stuff for us. Nobody asks me if I got you your ring yet, no one is disappointed when I say no.
It’s really all ok now. No regrets, nothing I can’t salvage, nothing left out in the rain with nobody to care for it. Your shoes fit in that plane ride back to hell, and I dragged mine behind a speeding vehicle.
What the fuck were we thinking kid? Now that everything is sorted out, and what I miss the most is the curiosity of another human being. It’s such a big new year though. It’s a new face, and new home, and a new piece of America to yell out to.
So congratulations, a toast to us!
It’s our anniversary,
You’ve hidden my keys,
This is one anniversary,
You’ll be spending with me.
Here is to a new chapter of my life, as this anniversary can likely be the split between separate types of existence. We were just kids at play when the whole thing started, and here I am giving it all much more air than it should have. Honestly, it was never important enough to devote a volume too. Just a lonely little girl in a new school; looking for someone to run his fingers through her hair, and hold her hand when she crossed the street. And what was not important, was us. We were a product of consumer desire, two objects brought onto the rack at inconvenient times; so much so that our space had no choice but to overlap and therefore conflict.
Wouldn’t I like to believe we found love at last, that we perpetuated all that human garbage of infidelity and detestable spirit in only the fear and inadequacy of ourselves? If only psychology were a science!
…
And today I washed down my vitamins with peppermint schnapps, mainly because it was the only thing at hand. Count four large vitamin E tablets. I heard the mixture as it met at the bottom of the lengthy slalom, and I made out their rather polite greetings.
Vitamin E, being a stately antioxidant, offered the first bit of conversation as he quipped “I haven’t quite seen you here before sir, have we been acquainted?”
Alcohol met the challenge with “Actually I come here often, though this schedule is a bit out of the ordinary.”
E said “True to that, I’m generally a morning person you see.”
They shook hands and went there separate yet identical ways; whilst I proceeded to sleep like a champ... This kid has got heart…
Wednesday, January 12, 2005
Five Deadly Resolutions
So baby, we made it into another new year, just like this whole collection of stuff started. My kudos to those that have been there since the beginning and to whomever we picked up as a hitch-hiker in this mess of written architecture.
So I though I would start this session with a collection of short, digestible pieces; something I don’t do often enough nowadays. It should forecast what’s in store for this New Year.
Planned we have a big birthday special, letters to famous insects, the public’s response to corpses, fun with ethnic foods and some essays on just how grand it is to be a voyeur in the digital world.
Stay tuned!
(ONE)
I am the Buddha of irony. I am poised with quiet resolve, yet inflicted by common instinct. I am the Buddha or irony who is posed in the half lotus and watches the wet snow slip through gray clouds ad land solid on the ground.
I live somewhere that hasn’t seen snow in over one hundred years. Wait, correction, two days. I won’t over exaggerate my connection, because it is merely unfortunate that my spite of snow is so fruitless that it seems to follow me well into the tropics. This is so much to the chagrin of my local compatriots that I am introduced to new people as the guy who brought a white Christmas.
And then there is,
- Hello?
- Ya, hey, merry Christmas - so how’s the weather?
- ... So, I guess you heard...
This is also the day where you will find corpses roaming the stores like bulimics strolling the buffet line, just and obedience to routine but no desire left in their eyes. Tired faces that have been masturbating to QVC since the onset of last New Year and they suddenly find they own the whole goddamn color coordinated collection. There is no greater sorrow than the distended consumerist.
So today every wire wise man and porcelain camel are perfectly painted and nestled in nativity scenes, no a creature is stirring, aside from the Bose acoustic radio.
(TWO)
It’s still the twilight of December, and the beat of fireworks thrum in the background on the horizon of noise. They open like petals and fall oblivious to their own flame. They prey on tender altitude and fizzle on the inspection of their obvious phobia of heights. Embers so ecstatic, whirling and dropping like heavenly carousels and scaring the shit out of the unexpecting.
Home detonated sparklers hiss with a colorful inferno. Hand lit crackers tossed out on the street feel like a gunshot through you; tapping for long moments after in your head. You look for holes… keep walking.
Children grin with something much like fright while dad sets the car on fire or blows off his knuckles with a bottle rocket and a hair spray can. Let’s bring in the New Year.
In mere moments the night will buckle and change into a much more fitting number for our emerging age. We will continue our crawl from the birth of Jesus, thought the computers can count it now for Eons. What’s a couple thousand more years between visits of a sandaled carrier pigeon?
2000 was really the year of Armageddon; like every other year. Just keep counting the days: it keeps us distracted. Just like simulating gunshots, it keeps you numb for when the real thing gets here. It keeps everything just like another fact of life, like another fart joke gone wrong.
Now my thumb is a meaty hammer that falls down upon the pin and sequentially the powder loaded and pressed shell in the chamber of my fist. Here's looking at you kid; but it still looks like I’m going to shoot your face off.
Suddenly I’m looking up as the ball come crashing down, and I hope that it won't crush me this year. I’m ready to drink up just enough life to give me the hangover that will last well into next year, except it’s a headache called restlessness. There is no damn cure for that; I’ve tried water and aspirin, a shower, meditation, a walk by the canal, smelling salts, eating healthy and new age music.
Somewhere they are shooting off their flare guns; restless souls who need real guns instead, so they can say I’m armed now, let’s talk one on one. Maybe it would make a difference; instead of just pointing harshly they could drop us dead. Ah, keep your firecrackers.
The bell chimes and countless platters of dry, dry champagne and raised to salty lips, cheering lips, lips abstained from these substances since all but a year ago...
(THREE)
Another puzzling situation is when a well-meaning and/or polite older person enters the shop with an armful of old video reels or some ancient photographs to be retouched. The pictures are generally worn and water stained; that typical faux sepia of an authentic antique. They want them manipulated and manhandled, i.e. restored to better than original condition, and we are the people to do it.
The one problem remains; as they pull from dank old envelopes this tattered last memory of the years gone by, you can see a young face peering out. It strikes you familiar, and in looking up you can nearly mouth the words coming out.
“I’ve changed a lot in forty years…”
What do you say to that? No? You just look between these two captures, one on old acidy paper and another with light bouncing off a three dimensional person, and assess the work of aging. It’s almost as though they are handing you a before and after photo of life, and the worst part is that there is no product they are carrying in that old envelope that will help slow it down.
I think it’s just the instant gratification of angst that kicks in at that moment, and you try to choke it down as you play them for how much it’s worth to them to get this picture back to the way it was.
They joke about adding five bucks to get rid of some weight, or the mole on their nose and you can’t help but laugh together. Hell, we’re all victims; life is a support group sitting in itself.
Half of you has to wonder though if maybe they are here with that envelope to relive it with someone, keep that now abstract photograph a more vivid memory by making it important to you too. In that way it works. It’s a communal thing, begging our way out of mortality. Make death so sad it has to leave the room too...
(FOUR)
In an argument of principles I have been known to battle my enemies with a fierce blasphemy, but with shock value aside lets revisit some key points.
First is the date rape mentality of god, which urges me to think less in the vein of divinity as that of a slightly stoned and beer engorged Penn State College frat boy.
The facts are that god’s sightings are few and far between, generally just stops here and there for conjugal visits. Albeit sexing a married woman he is careless enough to beget offspring and instead of admitting defeat he says, “Yes, he’s my son, but look how great he is to play with!”
Well with all this catholic shit going on, I have to be a little uptight. It’s such a raunchy book anyhow. And of course Jesus loves me; he will say anything to get into my pants.
(FIVE)
I just took a long shower to wash the salts off my body, put there by ocean waves from swimming in the brisk sea. It’s the second week of January. This is a dream typically only realized by retired northerners. Damn their luck. I still have a libido and I can drive at night. Get out of my way; I’m not stopping at the ocean.
So I though I would start this session with a collection of short, digestible pieces; something I don’t do often enough nowadays. It should forecast what’s in store for this New Year.
Planned we have a big birthday special, letters to famous insects, the public’s response to corpses, fun with ethnic foods and some essays on just how grand it is to be a voyeur in the digital world.
Stay tuned!
(ONE)
I am the Buddha of irony. I am poised with quiet resolve, yet inflicted by common instinct. I am the Buddha or irony who is posed in the half lotus and watches the wet snow slip through gray clouds ad land solid on the ground.
I live somewhere that hasn’t seen snow in over one hundred years. Wait, correction, two days. I won’t over exaggerate my connection, because it is merely unfortunate that my spite of snow is so fruitless that it seems to follow me well into the tropics. This is so much to the chagrin of my local compatriots that I am introduced to new people as the guy who brought a white Christmas.
And then there is,
- Hello?
- Ya, hey, merry Christmas - so how’s the weather?
- ... So, I guess you heard...
This is also the day where you will find corpses roaming the stores like bulimics strolling the buffet line, just and obedience to routine but no desire left in their eyes. Tired faces that have been masturbating to QVC since the onset of last New Year and they suddenly find they own the whole goddamn color coordinated collection. There is no greater sorrow than the distended consumerist.
So today every wire wise man and porcelain camel are perfectly painted and nestled in nativity scenes, no a creature is stirring, aside from the Bose acoustic radio.
(TWO)
It’s still the twilight of December, and the beat of fireworks thrum in the background on the horizon of noise. They open like petals and fall oblivious to their own flame. They prey on tender altitude and fizzle on the inspection of their obvious phobia of heights. Embers so ecstatic, whirling and dropping like heavenly carousels and scaring the shit out of the unexpecting.
Home detonated sparklers hiss with a colorful inferno. Hand lit crackers tossed out on the street feel like a gunshot through you; tapping for long moments after in your head. You look for holes… keep walking.
Children grin with something much like fright while dad sets the car on fire or blows off his knuckles with a bottle rocket and a hair spray can. Let’s bring in the New Year.
In mere moments the night will buckle and change into a much more fitting number for our emerging age. We will continue our crawl from the birth of Jesus, thought the computers can count it now for Eons. What’s a couple thousand more years between visits of a sandaled carrier pigeon?
2000 was really the year of Armageddon; like every other year. Just keep counting the days: it keeps us distracted. Just like simulating gunshots, it keeps you numb for when the real thing gets here. It keeps everything just like another fact of life, like another fart joke gone wrong.
Now my thumb is a meaty hammer that falls down upon the pin and sequentially the powder loaded and pressed shell in the chamber of my fist. Here's looking at you kid; but it still looks like I’m going to shoot your face off.
Suddenly I’m looking up as the ball come crashing down, and I hope that it won't crush me this year. I’m ready to drink up just enough life to give me the hangover that will last well into next year, except it’s a headache called restlessness. There is no damn cure for that; I’ve tried water and aspirin, a shower, meditation, a walk by the canal, smelling salts, eating healthy and new age music.
Somewhere they are shooting off their flare guns; restless souls who need real guns instead, so they can say I’m armed now, let’s talk one on one. Maybe it would make a difference; instead of just pointing harshly they could drop us dead. Ah, keep your firecrackers.
The bell chimes and countless platters of dry, dry champagne and raised to salty lips, cheering lips, lips abstained from these substances since all but a year ago...
(THREE)
Another puzzling situation is when a well-meaning and/or polite older person enters the shop with an armful of old video reels or some ancient photographs to be retouched. The pictures are generally worn and water stained; that typical faux sepia of an authentic antique. They want them manipulated and manhandled, i.e. restored to better than original condition, and we are the people to do it.
The one problem remains; as they pull from dank old envelopes this tattered last memory of the years gone by, you can see a young face peering out. It strikes you familiar, and in looking up you can nearly mouth the words coming out.
“I’ve changed a lot in forty years…”
What do you say to that? No? You just look between these two captures, one on old acidy paper and another with light bouncing off a three dimensional person, and assess the work of aging. It’s almost as though they are handing you a before and after photo of life, and the worst part is that there is no product they are carrying in that old envelope that will help slow it down.
I think it’s just the instant gratification of angst that kicks in at that moment, and you try to choke it down as you play them for how much it’s worth to them to get this picture back to the way it was.
They joke about adding five bucks to get rid of some weight, or the mole on their nose and you can’t help but laugh together. Hell, we’re all victims; life is a support group sitting in itself.
Half of you has to wonder though if maybe they are here with that envelope to relive it with someone, keep that now abstract photograph a more vivid memory by making it important to you too. In that way it works. It’s a communal thing, begging our way out of mortality. Make death so sad it has to leave the room too...
(FOUR)
In an argument of principles I have been known to battle my enemies with a fierce blasphemy, but with shock value aside lets revisit some key points.
First is the date rape mentality of god, which urges me to think less in the vein of divinity as that of a slightly stoned and beer engorged Penn State College frat boy.
The facts are that god’s sightings are few and far between, generally just stops here and there for conjugal visits. Albeit sexing a married woman he is careless enough to beget offspring and instead of admitting defeat he says, “Yes, he’s my son, but look how great he is to play with!”
Well with all this catholic shit going on, I have to be a little uptight. It’s such a raunchy book anyhow. And of course Jesus loves me; he will say anything to get into my pants.
(FIVE)
I just took a long shower to wash the salts off my body, put there by ocean waves from swimming in the brisk sea. It’s the second week of January. This is a dream typically only realized by retired northerners. Damn their luck. I still have a libido and I can drive at night. Get out of my way; I’m not stopping at the ocean.
Monday, December 27, 2004
Orally Yours
I would have to say it was the Spanish who invented oral sex, and for many reasons. The conjugation of a verb or the oral processing of a cluster of R’s pours off the tip of the tongue with a vibration only akin to energy designed to stir a lover’s blood.
Such cunnilingus of speech leaves one no doubt when drawing parallels between a softly bent Spanish T, to the careful angles of luring the clitoris out of its fleshy hiding spots. The O’s are gentle twitches of the lips that brush away troublesome hairs. J’s are muted conveniently to emit a rumble of pleasing echoes; all directed upward the lips, all ferocity of its formation funneled upward to waiting nerves; albeit pert nipples of philosophy or the ecstatic labia of current events. Perhaps the Perineum of politics…
And to the elation residing in the rest of the long vowels… Even the accented Ń; it sends its hungering lips to ridges and senses indescribable by my uptight English tongue. Those sultry diphthongs that light up the Mexican night, driving us all to shudder when it’s finally all through. A thousand young mouths throbbing to the beat of the livid and languid tongue, all wrestling their bodies to give enough force for one more ménage with tonight’s spoken volumes.
What Provocateurs,
What Oral Artisans…
Such cunnilingus of speech leaves one no doubt when drawing parallels between a softly bent Spanish T, to the careful angles of luring the clitoris out of its fleshy hiding spots. The O’s are gentle twitches of the lips that brush away troublesome hairs. J’s are muted conveniently to emit a rumble of pleasing echoes; all directed upward the lips, all ferocity of its formation funneled upward to waiting nerves; albeit pert nipples of philosophy or the ecstatic labia of current events. Perhaps the Perineum of politics…
And to the elation residing in the rest of the long vowels… Even the accented Ń; it sends its hungering lips to ridges and senses indescribable by my uptight English tongue. Those sultry diphthongs that light up the Mexican night, driving us all to shudder when it’s finally all through. A thousand young mouths throbbing to the beat of the livid and languid tongue, all wrestling their bodies to give enough force for one more ménage with tonight’s spoken volumes.
What Provocateurs,
What Oral Artisans…
Thursday, December 23, 2004
letters from america - part 1
I’m not convinced that I would make a very good american. For instance; I don’t enjoy the smell of dryer sheets, or Robert Frost. Yes, I am implying an inherent stench in each. How far can I get with this dual barreled burden? A beloved poet raised by our fertile country; and too, the little paper sheets that coat our clothes with anti-static stink and lipid like texture, all put down in one opening paragraph.
Speaking american is like speaking vanilla. Neutral northern accents all but entirely bled of inflection, soaking the earth with white folk stereotypes. Dead tongues twitching to roll an ‘r’ that only comes out with a lisp. Vice Presidents that grin like vultures and that would swoop down to prey if the tight navy suit didn’t keep his flaps in check. Presidents that grin like a dachshund pondering a staircase, brow furrowed, lips pursed as to give clearance to the many very tiny government spy jets waiting in orbit to land upon them.
I have no particular quarrels with apple pie, though a rudimentary staple; or with majestic purple mountains for that matter. So I guess all is well, only a fifty percent loss in ratings, and the band plays on…
Speaking american is like speaking vanilla. Neutral northern accents all but entirely bled of inflection, soaking the earth with white folk stereotypes. Dead tongues twitching to roll an ‘r’ that only comes out with a lisp. Vice Presidents that grin like vultures and that would swoop down to prey if the tight navy suit didn’t keep his flaps in check. Presidents that grin like a dachshund pondering a staircase, brow furrowed, lips pursed as to give clearance to the many very tiny government spy jets waiting in orbit to land upon them.
I have no particular quarrels with apple pie, though a rudimentary staple; or with majestic purple mountains for that matter. So I guess all is well, only a fifty percent loss in ratings, and the band plays on…
Wednesday, December 22, 2004
Whispering Little Nothings
Sometimes, saying nothing at all says a lot. It says I’m angry and it’s only going to get worse by looking at you. It says that problems might just be bad enough that I don’t even want to think about solutions. It says I’m tired of accusing, pretending and having expectations of you. It says I’m at the moment where I need you the most.
These moments go on seemingly without end, only as perforations between us feeling content and alive. They are the abstractions of you fear of being alone, my fear of being happy, and our mutual inability to get the message across.
Those moments spent not speaking; were they hate, or caricatures in you minds eye reminding you not to talk to strangers.
Were you focused on my actions?
… Or my inactions?
Are there stories right now being made in your head, or merely rearranged and held firm with the glue of assumption, all lined up in sequence to make you feel ok with never talking to me again.
I feel trained to believe that this stage is the end of a companionship. Like the body without connection to the brain, such is the people without access to the precious spoken word.
I’ve begun to think this is the probable end to relationships. All quirks harvested and habits revealed, no more curiosity sustaining crop; so it all yields to slash and burn economics.
Six billion hungry mouths packed so tightly, no wonder we get sick of ourselves. Even the recorded voice drawling on while we sleep, television left speaking painfully into lonely space. Gospel shouts to panel walls and paintings of lush French battlefields. War and celebration on the big screens, left open to anyone left on the streets who is unoccupied enough to peep in.
Stereos lined up across countries; tuned in to hear the same radio relayed mix album that we haven’t heard since yesterday. Its barely mixed up with the new birthday announcements and one live segment that comes on just long enough to tell us how many shopping days until X-mass.
Perhaps saying nothing at all will inevitably say so much more than repeating the same empty expressionless phrases that a lover gets all too often. But perhaps too, there is a world inside us that grows smaller and smaller at every day spent at depriving each other of those precious words.
It’s December, again, and the world has some very unflattering ideas still built up about me. The foremost was its instinct for reminding me how bad I was at falling in love. It would trespass all too frequently and speak its mind unto me. “Hey… You got problems babe…”
… And maybe it was still pretty dead on; that damn gravelly voice. But, if I were to ask what it’s really talking about when the subject of love comes up? It would probably have little on its mind but some arrows through hearts and a quote from Plato out of context. The way I see it, the world is out of sorts with what it loves today. Love to you is just another false prophet of hedonism, strung out to dry with garlic necklaces and other fairytale STD remedies.
So we find ourselves another mess of manmade ideas, groping for something organic, and all we find is love? Perhaps. Love is something you can do when no one is looking, when the world is all but a closed eye for the night and you can’t keep it all to yourself.
Love is not in the kitchen making brownies, she is crouching in the bushes, making fun of your lifestyle and cursing the day you chose to repaint your fence.
These moments go on seemingly without end, only as perforations between us feeling content and alive. They are the abstractions of you fear of being alone, my fear of being happy, and our mutual inability to get the message across.
Those moments spent not speaking; were they hate, or caricatures in you minds eye reminding you not to talk to strangers.
Were you focused on my actions?
… Or my inactions?
Are there stories right now being made in your head, or merely rearranged and held firm with the glue of assumption, all lined up in sequence to make you feel ok with never talking to me again.
I feel trained to believe that this stage is the end of a companionship. Like the body without connection to the brain, such is the people without access to the precious spoken word.
I’ve begun to think this is the probable end to relationships. All quirks harvested and habits revealed, no more curiosity sustaining crop; so it all yields to slash and burn economics.
Six billion hungry mouths packed so tightly, no wonder we get sick of ourselves. Even the recorded voice drawling on while we sleep, television left speaking painfully into lonely space. Gospel shouts to panel walls and paintings of lush French battlefields. War and celebration on the big screens, left open to anyone left on the streets who is unoccupied enough to peep in.
Stereos lined up across countries; tuned in to hear the same radio relayed mix album that we haven’t heard since yesterday. Its barely mixed up with the new birthday announcements and one live segment that comes on just long enough to tell us how many shopping days until X-mass.
Perhaps saying nothing at all will inevitably say so much more than repeating the same empty expressionless phrases that a lover gets all too often. But perhaps too, there is a world inside us that grows smaller and smaller at every day spent at depriving each other of those precious words.
It’s December, again, and the world has some very unflattering ideas still built up about me. The foremost was its instinct for reminding me how bad I was at falling in love. It would trespass all too frequently and speak its mind unto me. “Hey… You got problems babe…”
… And maybe it was still pretty dead on; that damn gravelly voice. But, if I were to ask what it’s really talking about when the subject of love comes up? It would probably have little on its mind but some arrows through hearts and a quote from Plato out of context. The way I see it, the world is out of sorts with what it loves today. Love to you is just another false prophet of hedonism, strung out to dry with garlic necklaces and other fairytale STD remedies.
So we find ourselves another mess of manmade ideas, groping for something organic, and all we find is love? Perhaps. Love is something you can do when no one is looking, when the world is all but a closed eye for the night and you can’t keep it all to yourself.
Love is not in the kitchen making brownies, she is crouching in the bushes, making fun of your lifestyle and cursing the day you chose to repaint your fence.
Thursday, December 16, 2004
New Proletariats…
Congratulations, I have been briefed on the new and natural state of political affairs surrounding the consumerist derivation of sexuality we have come to know. I should perhaps share this manifest with your readers in hopes that recognition of this faltering economic development will somehow spare us all from over consumption demise.
Ejaculate is the brand new proletariat. Anything less than a union for our multitude of young underprivileged workers will not do. Is it not for them that we prosper? Is it not their interests met on the silver screens and the musty bed linens of all in love?
Are we still not simply the bourgeois who go mostly unaware of the needs of our sex, instead consuming it so blind and rapidly that the sweaty hands and uncovered bellies can barely keep pace. It is we who are at mercy to the needs of our engineered masses, those ceaselessly generated and gracelessly unappreciated by our own dedication in a race to arm ourselves with progeny.
Labors of love… Sounds like sweaty innuendo. Greeting cards and skin flicks dance titles in the brain, on the periphery of dreaming, falling asleep to neon signs. It is for this tryst of palpate sensations that the new blue collar marches.
Heavy crosses these burdens, those impermanent satisfactions. Those thirty second trailers of what is to come. The trial membership of lust and date rape and boozy hallway pinches. It is an alienation from the fruits of our labor; right my dead heroes? Such that we cannot bear to look at the faces of our children made in such splendor less states. Such that we cannot tolerate the sense of attraction without foreboding; the inevitable response to a sociological impotence that transcends breeding, and climbs the fruitless limbs of altruism.
Our new minister of propaganda appears on our sets and strips himself of armament, i.e. his pantaloons. The closest secretariat gladly bends over, inspecting the hedonism from inside out. Are we evil!? Exclaim a million marching soldiers in compression shorts or red red lingerie. “God gave me this” shout the old men on rooftops, fingers splayed, it’s supposed to mean peace without your tongue in it.
All hail we say, dangling in the suspense of rejection or satisfaction. I take it back; the world has not changed in one thousand one thousand years. Its currency merely takes the faces of its new hero’s. That is why “fuck you” is the strongest phrase in the English language; and it sells, goddamn baby it sells…
Ejaculate is the brand new proletariat. Anything less than a union for our multitude of young underprivileged workers will not do. Is it not for them that we prosper? Is it not their interests met on the silver screens and the musty bed linens of all in love?
Are we still not simply the bourgeois who go mostly unaware of the needs of our sex, instead consuming it so blind and rapidly that the sweaty hands and uncovered bellies can barely keep pace. It is we who are at mercy to the needs of our engineered masses, those ceaselessly generated and gracelessly unappreciated by our own dedication in a race to arm ourselves with progeny.
Labors of love… Sounds like sweaty innuendo. Greeting cards and skin flicks dance titles in the brain, on the periphery of dreaming, falling asleep to neon signs. It is for this tryst of palpate sensations that the new blue collar marches.
Heavy crosses these burdens, those impermanent satisfactions. Those thirty second trailers of what is to come. The trial membership of lust and date rape and boozy hallway pinches. It is an alienation from the fruits of our labor; right my dead heroes? Such that we cannot bear to look at the faces of our children made in such splendor less states. Such that we cannot tolerate the sense of attraction without foreboding; the inevitable response to a sociological impotence that transcends breeding, and climbs the fruitless limbs of altruism.
Our new minister of propaganda appears on our sets and strips himself of armament, i.e. his pantaloons. The closest secretariat gladly bends over, inspecting the hedonism from inside out. Are we evil!? Exclaim a million marching soldiers in compression shorts or red red lingerie. “God gave me this” shout the old men on rooftops, fingers splayed, it’s supposed to mean peace without your tongue in it.
All hail we say, dangling in the suspense of rejection or satisfaction. I take it back; the world has not changed in one thousand one thousand years. Its currency merely takes the faces of its new hero’s. That is why “fuck you” is the strongest phrase in the English language; and it sells, goddamn baby it sells…
Tuesday, December 14, 2004
Diggin’ for Dead Men
Once, while mining for mineral ore deposits somewhere in the subterranean depths of south western Pennsylvania, Benjamin had the desire to posit a daring question to his digging buddy and long time comrade Jake.
All dirty and capped with a yellow protective helmet, it was a provocatively human moment when he turned his head and pronounced…
“Why are all my hero’s dead?”
And sure it was true that in the good old days he watched great characters from MASH keel over from well simulated bullet hits. He continued his investigation into the curious nature of mortality with his obsession for crime dramas and cops shows. It was a combination of his love of logic and the law, yes, with the fertile subtext of a lonely bachelor home life. But they all seemed to pass away too suddenly, much to the heavy burden of our narrator.
“Can we recognize hero’s when they are alive? Or are they better dead, when they are people without problems?”
True that a certain amount of overlooking can make a better role model, as I’m sure that our questioner is insinuating. Even though, I must question the truest motive behind his inquiry, his quest to be enlightened. Didn’t your daddy love you and fill you with respect, led you a childhood without superfluous violence. Didn’t every hero of your comic book genre grant you some lesser amount of helplessness and convey a lesson, a moral, and a commandment. Did not the coaxing of your peers give you the esteem to wander away from ephemeral and angst-ful questions?
Maybe it was not that at all.
Law school was quite the venture. Everybody knew you could do it, everyone lauded your capacity to succeed. You would be an enterprising youth, emerging like a busted chrysalis into the new world of surging opportunities. You drank and fucked, and made me proud. You harvested youth and promoted your own. You were careful enough; you didn’t steal any lives or make any new ones. For this accomplishment we bowed until our foreheads touched our feet.
One day you ran into a girl, perhaps an easy one. She though she had cancer, she cried, she thought nobody loved her enough, she knew you might mean those things about marrying her sad ass. Your penis spoke eloquently to her, addressing her innate fears of dying alone, and this is how you made her yours for only one night. You filled all the empty parts of her that night, and how could we hate you for that, your just a feeding, fucking, sleeping organismo.
Maybe I’m no better by wanting permanence, which could just be stealing a young girl’s life away. Don’t die with regrets… Hump away youthful vixens. How can I be angry that you didn’t die for me, that you didn’t turn off your sex for me, that you didn’t stop your lusting forever when I entered the picture. How gracious I now become knowing that I asked you to deprive yourself for me, how humble now that I recognize that I alone cannot suffice for you. That is of course total shit. I blame furiously.
I apologize for fecklessly losing my objectivity. It is of course this that you ask abjectly from one who narrates this type of experience.
So hero’s go back to whence they came, despite their forthcomings, is that the lesson we learn from this collection of verbiage in the tumult of a below earthen gap? Do you mean not for us to glean a hopeful detail from these cogitations?
“Perhaps we are each a hero to someone out there…“muttered Jake, the elder member of our two man drilling committee. And so it was established. Two corners of thought fighting for supremacy in this narrow crevasse. It was tools dangling and each twitching with the anticipation of some side winning word to wrap up the need for this figurative race to the core of the earth.
“How can I help you, she says to me. On the back of her shirt...” Benjamin gets back to an earlier tangent. It was something about the super market and how it was stealing his life.
“She couldn’t help me, right!? All I wanted was an answer to why I threw my life away.”
And that’s true again! Just like we all throw it away my friend; for lack of better excuses, for lack of any better creativity to draw us away from natural demise. Yet don’t look to me to find the exactitudes of this mess. I’m on the same front, doling out angry bayoneted thrusts to my own attackers of ego and psyche. I’m busy tossing my life away, just like you my friend, except were both doing it alone now, thanks to cicumstance.
Girls go back to school to find themselves anew; to dump or get dumped by prior lovers and to establish a routine of self pity and aggregation of new romance. We do the same too, maybe a job or some summer classes, try to work hard and define this soul of ours. Why would it stick with us, things we failed at, things we now detest every moment of? How could we just go back to law school and sit back in law school, and think of law school, when there was something so burdening inside the three of us.
Why can’t we just fight and get it over with, get our purity back from ourselves. Why these violations can’t be washed away with water, to break those salty stains that we leave on other peoples bodies in the churning heat of the most reckless of moments. Just let it be all of us in a big soapy tub to apologize for hurting each others feelings and discarding the hate of the other floating bodies; slowly but surely.
More of those countless hours float by in the unknowing pitch of dark underground. Sandstones open up lubricious maws to squeeze lamplight through, mostly just taunting an under stimulated mind to wander with preoccupation of the surface. Who knows what horrific deeds were cancelled out by the miles of black rock and dust, though it was no deed of theirs that was being kept from escaping at one time or another into the open gasping air. These thinks of theirs just like middle earth canaries, let out of cages to bolt to the sunny brilliance of the world above their heads, bursting into daylight and watched carefully to see if the survive this foreign world.
Its just sex you would say, perhaps in unison with the girl you though you loved, as she mouthed it to familiar ears. It’s just a physical action, like walking or running, or humping your pillow somnambulistly in the dead night. Screwing you defined as a desperate filling.
Maybe not even that. Maybe you were just hurting and needed more. Maybe it had nothing to do with me at all. Damn. All this time spent thinking I had a purpose; to fight this defilement. Suddenly it becomes painfully clear that I’m less in control than I ever thought. But at least I live up top here!
Hammer…
Pickaxe…
Diamond bit drill…
Your hands work quick unfastening what sedimentary formations thought they had firmly put into place. Your sharp commands bring your implements effortlessly into your hands. Sweat hardly discernable under the bellowing breath of the caverns, its humid and esophageal atmosphere. Then it’s the constant clamor of cathartic brain noise, like the hint of religion on someone’s tongue; your thoughts of heroism burning a hole in your psyche.
“Perhaps each one of us has that special someone, somewhere, waiting for us…” Jake incited, causing Benjamin to exhale briskly and emit conical funnels of dust from each nostril. His tools whirred to a stop and his eyes fell to the abyss below his dangling feet.
“How can you say that…?” Came cautiously from pursed lips and closed eyes, a head focusing on an impossible focal length.
How can you say that Jake? Waiting for us like some fucking miracle of creation beget us each a perfect love, to be found and conquered like a fairy tale tragedy. Jake, you have been immersed in this tunnel too long, hidden from UV and perhaps lacking of vitamin D synthesized by your skins contact with natural light. If not, if you are less than maniac and trod nearer the truth, then I humbly bow out of this contest. I knew love in my own heart and could not even begin to permeate the fastidious little seed that our deep earth mariner had planted inside that questioning heart.
I live on the goddamn top, and that’s not enough. I can’t play king of the mountain. I just live on ground a bit closer to the sky.
Thanks for that one last chance my friends. They are aspirating gently on dimly chilled guttural winds. In the belly of the beast, each mind yet a muscle to the end means of this oblivious organismo. We, just wheat in its colon; corn in its undulating stomachs. Can’t you hear the winds a blowing, but it’s the beating of a heart, and were all under the fist of idealism, waiting for our daylight when we are finally digested and make the wet plunge to clod or sidewalk alike.
Detonation caps sing songs of finality that we can never know; searing the rock and blaring its last horn for all the world to hear. Sometimes it is as those little rock holes fall in on themselves, just like our escapes to the outside world, leaving us alone with ourselves in velvet oblivion.
All dirty and capped with a yellow protective helmet, it was a provocatively human moment when he turned his head and pronounced…
“Why are all my hero’s dead?”
And sure it was true that in the good old days he watched great characters from MASH keel over from well simulated bullet hits. He continued his investigation into the curious nature of mortality with his obsession for crime dramas and cops shows. It was a combination of his love of logic and the law, yes, with the fertile subtext of a lonely bachelor home life. But they all seemed to pass away too suddenly, much to the heavy burden of our narrator.
“Can we recognize hero’s when they are alive? Or are they better dead, when they are people without problems?”
True that a certain amount of overlooking can make a better role model, as I’m sure that our questioner is insinuating. Even though, I must question the truest motive behind his inquiry, his quest to be enlightened. Didn’t your daddy love you and fill you with respect, led you a childhood without superfluous violence. Didn’t every hero of your comic book genre grant you some lesser amount of helplessness and convey a lesson, a moral, and a commandment. Did not the coaxing of your peers give you the esteem to wander away from ephemeral and angst-ful questions?
Maybe it was not that at all.
Law school was quite the venture. Everybody knew you could do it, everyone lauded your capacity to succeed. You would be an enterprising youth, emerging like a busted chrysalis into the new world of surging opportunities. You drank and fucked, and made me proud. You harvested youth and promoted your own. You were careful enough; you didn’t steal any lives or make any new ones. For this accomplishment we bowed until our foreheads touched our feet.
One day you ran into a girl, perhaps an easy one. She though she had cancer, she cried, she thought nobody loved her enough, she knew you might mean those things about marrying her sad ass. Your penis spoke eloquently to her, addressing her innate fears of dying alone, and this is how you made her yours for only one night. You filled all the empty parts of her that night, and how could we hate you for that, your just a feeding, fucking, sleeping organismo.
Maybe I’m no better by wanting permanence, which could just be stealing a young girl’s life away. Don’t die with regrets… Hump away youthful vixens. How can I be angry that you didn’t die for me, that you didn’t turn off your sex for me, that you didn’t stop your lusting forever when I entered the picture. How gracious I now become knowing that I asked you to deprive yourself for me, how humble now that I recognize that I alone cannot suffice for you. That is of course total shit. I blame furiously.
I apologize for fecklessly losing my objectivity. It is of course this that you ask abjectly from one who narrates this type of experience.
So hero’s go back to whence they came, despite their forthcomings, is that the lesson we learn from this collection of verbiage in the tumult of a below earthen gap? Do you mean not for us to glean a hopeful detail from these cogitations?
“Perhaps we are each a hero to someone out there…“muttered Jake, the elder member of our two man drilling committee. And so it was established. Two corners of thought fighting for supremacy in this narrow crevasse. It was tools dangling and each twitching with the anticipation of some side winning word to wrap up the need for this figurative race to the core of the earth.
“How can I help you, she says to me. On the back of her shirt...” Benjamin gets back to an earlier tangent. It was something about the super market and how it was stealing his life.
“She couldn’t help me, right!? All I wanted was an answer to why I threw my life away.”
And that’s true again! Just like we all throw it away my friend; for lack of better excuses, for lack of any better creativity to draw us away from natural demise. Yet don’t look to me to find the exactitudes of this mess. I’m on the same front, doling out angry bayoneted thrusts to my own attackers of ego and psyche. I’m busy tossing my life away, just like you my friend, except were both doing it alone now, thanks to cicumstance.
Girls go back to school to find themselves anew; to dump or get dumped by prior lovers and to establish a routine of self pity and aggregation of new romance. We do the same too, maybe a job or some summer classes, try to work hard and define this soul of ours. Why would it stick with us, things we failed at, things we now detest every moment of? How could we just go back to law school and sit back in law school, and think of law school, when there was something so burdening inside the three of us.
Why can’t we just fight and get it over with, get our purity back from ourselves. Why these violations can’t be washed away with water, to break those salty stains that we leave on other peoples bodies in the churning heat of the most reckless of moments. Just let it be all of us in a big soapy tub to apologize for hurting each others feelings and discarding the hate of the other floating bodies; slowly but surely.
More of those countless hours float by in the unknowing pitch of dark underground. Sandstones open up lubricious maws to squeeze lamplight through, mostly just taunting an under stimulated mind to wander with preoccupation of the surface. Who knows what horrific deeds were cancelled out by the miles of black rock and dust, though it was no deed of theirs that was being kept from escaping at one time or another into the open gasping air. These thinks of theirs just like middle earth canaries, let out of cages to bolt to the sunny brilliance of the world above their heads, bursting into daylight and watched carefully to see if the survive this foreign world.
Its just sex you would say, perhaps in unison with the girl you though you loved, as she mouthed it to familiar ears. It’s just a physical action, like walking or running, or humping your pillow somnambulistly in the dead night. Screwing you defined as a desperate filling.
Maybe not even that. Maybe you were just hurting and needed more. Maybe it had nothing to do with me at all. Damn. All this time spent thinking I had a purpose; to fight this defilement. Suddenly it becomes painfully clear that I’m less in control than I ever thought. But at least I live up top here!
Hammer…
Pickaxe…
Diamond bit drill…
Your hands work quick unfastening what sedimentary formations thought they had firmly put into place. Your sharp commands bring your implements effortlessly into your hands. Sweat hardly discernable under the bellowing breath of the caverns, its humid and esophageal atmosphere. Then it’s the constant clamor of cathartic brain noise, like the hint of religion on someone’s tongue; your thoughts of heroism burning a hole in your psyche.
“Perhaps each one of us has that special someone, somewhere, waiting for us…” Jake incited, causing Benjamin to exhale briskly and emit conical funnels of dust from each nostril. His tools whirred to a stop and his eyes fell to the abyss below his dangling feet.
“How can you say that…?” Came cautiously from pursed lips and closed eyes, a head focusing on an impossible focal length.
How can you say that Jake? Waiting for us like some fucking miracle of creation beget us each a perfect love, to be found and conquered like a fairy tale tragedy. Jake, you have been immersed in this tunnel too long, hidden from UV and perhaps lacking of vitamin D synthesized by your skins contact with natural light. If not, if you are less than maniac and trod nearer the truth, then I humbly bow out of this contest. I knew love in my own heart and could not even begin to permeate the fastidious little seed that our deep earth mariner had planted inside that questioning heart.
I live on the goddamn top, and that’s not enough. I can’t play king of the mountain. I just live on ground a bit closer to the sky.
Thanks for that one last chance my friends. They are aspirating gently on dimly chilled guttural winds. In the belly of the beast, each mind yet a muscle to the end means of this oblivious organismo. We, just wheat in its colon; corn in its undulating stomachs. Can’t you hear the winds a blowing, but it’s the beating of a heart, and were all under the fist of idealism, waiting for our daylight when we are finally digested and make the wet plunge to clod or sidewalk alike.
Detonation caps sing songs of finality that we can never know; searing the rock and blaring its last horn for all the world to hear. Sometimes it is as those little rock holes fall in on themselves, just like our escapes to the outside world, leaving us alone with ourselves in velvet oblivion.
Tuesday, December 07, 2004
Reel in Realty
“This is a late model ranch home, refurnished with period replication pieces. It was previously a one family dwelling, now trisected into these identical units.”
What she means is that it’s an old broken down home with its original broken down furniture, sold to an old sod with investments on the brain. He reworks some essential plumbing and adds some outlets, shoots up some rough dry wall and makes me a potential home.
“The kitchen is furnished…” as she shows me that all four burners work on the stove and that the fridge light comes on.
“We would just need a deposit and you can being moving in next week. Of course it will be the unit next door, but they are reasonably identical, just that one faces the street.”
Libby walks around the room, making sure she has enough closet space for her ample wardrobe and kitsch shoe collection. They are all great shoes though; I helped her throw away the crappy or redundant ones, now they all fit within select categories and color combinations to give her maximum and practical flexibility.
Don’t know why she cared about closets. Most of her clothing was a large bin of underwear; a throwback from college days when she bragged an entire two months without doing laundry. She had stripes and dots, thongs and boy shorts, solids and diaphanous. Sporty bras, three pronged latch bras, front clasping bras; none that could escape the ruse of my nimble fingers. I looked at her eyes; I think we were thinking that same thing. We laughed together as the realtor was in the middle of telling us how to get to the laundry room and what key to use when the basement is flooding and we have to swim out the skylights. Damn, I had no idea what she was talking about. Then we were out the door..
“You really want to do this?”
The best thing to do is to sit on a question like that; you know she needs a little reassurance but if you give it too quick… Either way; we’re in my car, driving away from another cute brick apartment, wondering in unison about the true identity of the person next to us.
It difficult making that decision to discard your lives apart and trade them into one big mess of getting in each others way. To be immersed in the stage of required symbiosis, am I ready…
“And if we break up, you can have your girlfriends over.” She inserts without a pause of sense, as though that was my main concern. As if I were intrinsically drawn to that subject whenever I spoke of our plausible life together… This was her way of reasoning out of the complicated fluctuation called our relationship; and she was broadening the gap at every word.
“Lots of couples go through this.” She piped in; somewhere between a song and a crosswalk. Was she talking about her cheating problem or about the hesitance to move all of our shit into one pile called home? I was cued and ready for the sweet part that happened routinely in our near weekly cycle of despondence.
The first part of the cycle was a relatively smooth transition, loving words and gentle touches; it was all designed as a compliment to our affection to one another. It was the good part that made all the other things more bearable.
The secondary portion kicked in at random intervals, brought about by tiny things, habits and comments seeping out of their hiding places. It was a stage of precautionary measures and relative defensiveness that generally occurred when something triggered and tripped the jealousy instinct. Some days it was good sex that made us angry. Sometimes it was even sitting leg to leg in her little tub and trying to talk things out, why it would never happen again
The tertiary stage was brief, yet burned gratuitously. It was when I told her that I don’t think I have what it takes to be in this relationship. For me it was that one damn thing, I never could put it down. It was that bitter day in January when I sat at home to start a Camus novel and calm the fuck down; the same day she walked around Pittsburg with an old High School flame and got her confused little brains banged out.
The last, it was wonderful state of reconciliation. We flooded all of this into an hour or less of apathetic detritus. We argued and blamed and screamed with our hearts. We lashed tongues; we hid our wet faces in pillows and blankets. I can see it replay like some gaudy pantomime. We would get through it all again, we would finally tell each other what we needed to hear, the stuff that maybe we even meant when we said them, and that’s the scary part. We were just so damn honest and open, even after all the shit; that very moment of glory and indulgence.
Perpetuate Cycle… Now…
I L*VE you Johny. I L*VE you too Libby.
“You really want to do this!?” Her head rocking in my periphery, fighting my concentration and attention to the surrounding lanes for a bit of eye contact and some assurance that she isn’t just handing her check over to some half ass.
“Maybe we need this…” It just came out of me live relieved gas. It just felt right to say, felt forgiving and rewarding. I wanted it to be real; just the way I intended it, I wanted to stop this cycle some day.
“There are lots of places to do it in the cabin!” She said with a manic excitement. She was being playful now, coaxing me out of my shell and into a sensual mood. This might have been her defense route against pending emotional danger, disarming me with powerful sexuality; this I realized late in the relationship.
It was true anyhow. When we were given a friendly little tour of the cabin we researched those details whenever we were out of earshot or at eyeball range.
The air had a hint of hippy too it, some nice mountain folk renting from a lady botany Professor in Ca. We even went online to read a couple of her dissertations, to see if she was groovy enough to add to our new list of acquaintances.
The stairs were wide enough to fit us when entangled. We giggle. The washing machine was low enough. The bathroom sink was bolted on nice and tight. This tour was an experience of innuendo. We said thanks and dreamed for nights about holding each other forever in that little back yard.
“Ya, lots of places…” I said; nothing else on my mind but images and fleeting emotional gasps as I put together more reasons for and against the move.
“You should come with me this summer…” She said it quickly then went back to staring out the side window uninterestedly. Very coy. She even went far enough to clip some good jobs out of the local paper for me; and then we both entertained the though of driving that thousand miles together to spend a summer amidst the Steelers and the Amish.
“Lots of places…” That’s all that could come out of my stupid grinning lips. The mile rolled on and we rolled even father apart. I never could get over the affair; and she probably got fed up with my shit in the meantime.
How much can you expect two people to overcome anyhow? No goddamn Romeo’s over here baby. Just two people with time to kill and some nice apartments that need some credit secured lovebird to fill it up with their kitsch shoe collections and drums of groovy underpants.
Lots of places indeed, except that we gave up a long time ago on finding them together. Cast your heavy line in the chilly Atlantic, mine ill put with vigor into the frisky Gulf of Mexico. Reel in your catch kiddo, and let it be reality this time. Let it be the bright shining lips of just a bit truer of a world on your gilded hook. A world where I loved you for as long as you let me, and even just a bit longer…
What she means is that it’s an old broken down home with its original broken down furniture, sold to an old sod with investments on the brain. He reworks some essential plumbing and adds some outlets, shoots up some rough dry wall and makes me a potential home.
“The kitchen is furnished…” as she shows me that all four burners work on the stove and that the fridge light comes on.
“We would just need a deposit and you can being moving in next week. Of course it will be the unit next door, but they are reasonably identical, just that one faces the street.”
Libby walks around the room, making sure she has enough closet space for her ample wardrobe and kitsch shoe collection. They are all great shoes though; I helped her throw away the crappy or redundant ones, now they all fit within select categories and color combinations to give her maximum and practical flexibility.
Don’t know why she cared about closets. Most of her clothing was a large bin of underwear; a throwback from college days when she bragged an entire two months without doing laundry. She had stripes and dots, thongs and boy shorts, solids and diaphanous. Sporty bras, three pronged latch bras, front clasping bras; none that could escape the ruse of my nimble fingers. I looked at her eyes; I think we were thinking that same thing. We laughed together as the realtor was in the middle of telling us how to get to the laundry room and what key to use when the basement is flooding and we have to swim out the skylights. Damn, I had no idea what she was talking about. Then we were out the door..
“You really want to do this?”
The best thing to do is to sit on a question like that; you know she needs a little reassurance but if you give it too quick… Either way; we’re in my car, driving away from another cute brick apartment, wondering in unison about the true identity of the person next to us.
It difficult making that decision to discard your lives apart and trade them into one big mess of getting in each others way. To be immersed in the stage of required symbiosis, am I ready…
“And if we break up, you can have your girlfriends over.” She inserts without a pause of sense, as though that was my main concern. As if I were intrinsically drawn to that subject whenever I spoke of our plausible life together… This was her way of reasoning out of the complicated fluctuation called our relationship; and she was broadening the gap at every word.
“Lots of couples go through this.” She piped in; somewhere between a song and a crosswalk. Was she talking about her cheating problem or about the hesitance to move all of our shit into one pile called home? I was cued and ready for the sweet part that happened routinely in our near weekly cycle of despondence.
The first part of the cycle was a relatively smooth transition, loving words and gentle touches; it was all designed as a compliment to our affection to one another. It was the good part that made all the other things more bearable.
The secondary portion kicked in at random intervals, brought about by tiny things, habits and comments seeping out of their hiding places. It was a stage of precautionary measures and relative defensiveness that generally occurred when something triggered and tripped the jealousy instinct. Some days it was good sex that made us angry. Sometimes it was even sitting leg to leg in her little tub and trying to talk things out, why it would never happen again
The tertiary stage was brief, yet burned gratuitously. It was when I told her that I don’t think I have what it takes to be in this relationship. For me it was that one damn thing, I never could put it down. It was that bitter day in January when I sat at home to start a Camus novel and calm the fuck down; the same day she walked around Pittsburg with an old High School flame and got her confused little brains banged out.
The last, it was wonderful state of reconciliation. We flooded all of this into an hour or less of apathetic detritus. We argued and blamed and screamed with our hearts. We lashed tongues; we hid our wet faces in pillows and blankets. I can see it replay like some gaudy pantomime. We would get through it all again, we would finally tell each other what we needed to hear, the stuff that maybe we even meant when we said them, and that’s the scary part. We were just so damn honest and open, even after all the shit; that very moment of glory and indulgence.
Perpetuate Cycle… Now…
I L*VE you Johny. I L*VE you too Libby.
“You really want to do this!?” Her head rocking in my periphery, fighting my concentration and attention to the surrounding lanes for a bit of eye contact and some assurance that she isn’t just handing her check over to some half ass.
“Maybe we need this…” It just came out of me live relieved gas. It just felt right to say, felt forgiving and rewarding. I wanted it to be real; just the way I intended it, I wanted to stop this cycle some day.
“There are lots of places to do it in the cabin!” She said with a manic excitement. She was being playful now, coaxing me out of my shell and into a sensual mood. This might have been her defense route against pending emotional danger, disarming me with powerful sexuality; this I realized late in the relationship.
It was true anyhow. When we were given a friendly little tour of the cabin we researched those details whenever we were out of earshot or at eyeball range.
The air had a hint of hippy too it, some nice mountain folk renting from a lady botany Professor in Ca. We even went online to read a couple of her dissertations, to see if she was groovy enough to add to our new list of acquaintances.
The stairs were wide enough to fit us when entangled. We giggle. The washing machine was low enough. The bathroom sink was bolted on nice and tight. This tour was an experience of innuendo. We said thanks and dreamed for nights about holding each other forever in that little back yard.
“Ya, lots of places…” I said; nothing else on my mind but images and fleeting emotional gasps as I put together more reasons for and against the move.
“You should come with me this summer…” She said it quickly then went back to staring out the side window uninterestedly. Very coy. She even went far enough to clip some good jobs out of the local paper for me; and then we both entertained the though of driving that thousand miles together to spend a summer amidst the Steelers and the Amish.
“Lots of places…” That’s all that could come out of my stupid grinning lips. The mile rolled on and we rolled even father apart. I never could get over the affair; and she probably got fed up with my shit in the meantime.
How much can you expect two people to overcome anyhow? No goddamn Romeo’s over here baby. Just two people with time to kill and some nice apartments that need some credit secured lovebird to fill it up with their kitsch shoe collections and drums of groovy underpants.
Lots of places indeed, except that we gave up a long time ago on finding them together. Cast your heavy line in the chilly Atlantic, mine ill put with vigor into the frisky Gulf of Mexico. Reel in your catch kiddo, and let it be reality this time. Let it be the bright shining lips of just a bit truer of a world on your gilded hook. A world where I loved you for as long as you let me, and even just a bit longer…
Monday, December 06, 2004
It was the best of times…
It was the best of times…
Ok, who am I kidding? It’s the same old story of starting your life over that I’m certain that people getting this letter are sick of hearing about. People come and people go, often quicker than they came, and life assumes this surreal sequence of instability. Surges of association and experience; touching, talking, sharing food, all an explosion to the impermanence of nerve stimulation…
Sometimes, merely having your health is more of a bane than anything else. When Jessica had her brush with quick crawling skin cancer she seemed crazy and alive, unlike the middle aged angst we all stumble into. It drove her out of the house kicking and screaming, but I can’t say that was the wrong choice either. When Amanda sat in that chair to get her first pump of chemo; I wish I knew what she thought. Day by day, hour by hour... I’m sure we both tried to get the message, but it came through convoluted. When you said ouch, I’m sure it was a pain that was beyond your skin and bones; I knew that then too.
It’s not as though I envy chronic or incurable illness, or even the last minutes of life. It’s perhaps that as I watch the crowd around me fall to their ends, there deserves analysis of the freedom attained by instant recognition of the inevitable.
I look at my own life now; as a curious person must do; and add up the parts that I think need my remembering. Everything is a hiss and blur, like I never had time to clean up; to organize. Perhaps that’s why I like starting over; and over; and over… Maybe that’s the time cancer gave you, the moments to slim down your collection of half eaten and misplaced brain wrinkles.
Try writing seriously about chronic illness as “Shrek Two” gets funneled into the background in a surprisingly comical Spanish translation. Half of it is some footage of a little kid’s birthday party and lots of snippets of the energetic music tracks and enticing action animation. Gotta love the half breed called special occasion and event coverage; because these are the times I will cherish forever; funding my survival by helping the kind folks re-remember their lives in clear colors and perfect focus.
I’ve been awake too long, and everything on me stinks; even if I smell dryer sheets it’s all gotten old as my day draws on. I’m sleeping on couches and eating out of boxes. I’m reminded of a promise I made myself when I was younger and more naïve; I was going to find something to call home and stay there.
I pride myself of the fact that all of my earthly belongings fit in my car. Maybe that was shooting too big. Maybe feeding that is way too much responsibility and I should have only taken what fit on my back. Take a bus down, see the country…
Several explosive romances and a beautiful child later, I’m breaking my own promises by the day; and who’s not to say forever. People find me charming and mysterious enough to smile in front of and then curiously avoid. Love becomes a game of catch instead of hide and seek; and then love becomes freeze tag on a July morning when you run, run, run until all you can taste is the fog and your own snot. Nobody wins… but nobody cares. So physically deceptive…
Maybe my back is too much. Maybe I should have taken what fit in my pockets. Better get my best suit ready to make the journey, because I need to make a good impression when I get there. Tuck toothpaste in my lapel and call it good enough to go. Adventure, it’s like an instant grab bag of satisfaction, and there could be any amount of dollar store wonders waiting for you inside.
Still sleeping on couches, eating dry noodles like a candy bar and wondering why you feel so alive after all. That’s why I don’t believe that god is made for people like me. God is made for spiritual exhibitionists. God is made for the well off. God is made for people who don’t think about where bouillon comes from, just where it goes when the wife puts it in the water. God is made for those with enough extravagance to afford the weighty job of not needing to know a damn about what’s going on out there, on the battle front of reality.
So people come and people go, usually too late to save your thoughts on them. They pass like pinpricks in the lamp shade of night; just as you swing the whole thing around your head to drive the loneliness out of the room. “Get out” you scream, but even “it” doesn’t respond to you…
Ok, who am I kidding? It’s the same old story of starting your life over that I’m certain that people getting this letter are sick of hearing about. People come and people go, often quicker than they came, and life assumes this surreal sequence of instability. Surges of association and experience; touching, talking, sharing food, all an explosion to the impermanence of nerve stimulation…
Sometimes, merely having your health is more of a bane than anything else. When Jessica had her brush with quick crawling skin cancer she seemed crazy and alive, unlike the middle aged angst we all stumble into. It drove her out of the house kicking and screaming, but I can’t say that was the wrong choice either. When Amanda sat in that chair to get her first pump of chemo; I wish I knew what she thought. Day by day, hour by hour... I’m sure we both tried to get the message, but it came through convoluted. When you said ouch, I’m sure it was a pain that was beyond your skin and bones; I knew that then too.
It’s not as though I envy chronic or incurable illness, or even the last minutes of life. It’s perhaps that as I watch the crowd around me fall to their ends, there deserves analysis of the freedom attained by instant recognition of the inevitable.
I look at my own life now; as a curious person must do; and add up the parts that I think need my remembering. Everything is a hiss and blur, like I never had time to clean up; to organize. Perhaps that’s why I like starting over; and over; and over… Maybe that’s the time cancer gave you, the moments to slim down your collection of half eaten and misplaced brain wrinkles.
Try writing seriously about chronic illness as “Shrek Two” gets funneled into the background in a surprisingly comical Spanish translation. Half of it is some footage of a little kid’s birthday party and lots of snippets of the energetic music tracks and enticing action animation. Gotta love the half breed called special occasion and event coverage; because these are the times I will cherish forever; funding my survival by helping the kind folks re-remember their lives in clear colors and perfect focus.
I’ve been awake too long, and everything on me stinks; even if I smell dryer sheets it’s all gotten old as my day draws on. I’m sleeping on couches and eating out of boxes. I’m reminded of a promise I made myself when I was younger and more naïve; I was going to find something to call home and stay there.
I pride myself of the fact that all of my earthly belongings fit in my car. Maybe that was shooting too big. Maybe feeding that is way too much responsibility and I should have only taken what fit on my back. Take a bus down, see the country…
Several explosive romances and a beautiful child later, I’m breaking my own promises by the day; and who’s not to say forever. People find me charming and mysterious enough to smile in front of and then curiously avoid. Love becomes a game of catch instead of hide and seek; and then love becomes freeze tag on a July morning when you run, run, run until all you can taste is the fog and your own snot. Nobody wins… but nobody cares. So physically deceptive…
Maybe my back is too much. Maybe I should have taken what fit in my pockets. Better get my best suit ready to make the journey, because I need to make a good impression when I get there. Tuck toothpaste in my lapel and call it good enough to go. Adventure, it’s like an instant grab bag of satisfaction, and there could be any amount of dollar store wonders waiting for you inside.
Still sleeping on couches, eating dry noodles like a candy bar and wondering why you feel so alive after all. That’s why I don’t believe that god is made for people like me. God is made for spiritual exhibitionists. God is made for the well off. God is made for people who don’t think about where bouillon comes from, just where it goes when the wife puts it in the water. God is made for those with enough extravagance to afford the weighty job of not needing to know a damn about what’s going on out there, on the battle front of reality.
So people come and people go, usually too late to save your thoughts on them. They pass like pinpricks in the lamp shade of night; just as you swing the whole thing around your head to drive the loneliness out of the room. “Get out” you scream, but even “it” doesn’t respond to you…
Wednesday, December 01, 2004
Handing Out Dimes at Said Corner Store
The world had several ideas about me lately that weren’t too flattering. Initially it was a preoccupation with reminding me how bad I was at falling in love. It would rub it right in my face, “You got problems babe”.
And maybe life was right. Perhaps if it read in bold letters on my lapel “how’s my living”, I would get what you really think of it all on some tidy 1-800 voice mail. A good antiseptic tiding from across the phone might just kick it all into shape; let me know really what I was doing wrong.
Really, how many times can you fool yourself into thinking how different a relationship will be next time? Every time a great dance ends, you remind yourself of the things you learned, things you won’t yell again, or ways to keep a partner smiling, it all meant something… I’m sure everyone gets tired of starting over, but we can’t seem to set the brakes.
Today, none of that spoke even a whisper above the clamor of the plaza. Its open spaces were rife with the usual antiquated ideas of open air commerce. Hot dog vendors fit neatly between cell phone merchants and littered again by the occasional bible thumper. For your convenience, you could pick up god and a new pair of ray bans today, and you didn’t even know who to thank.
That was my stroll down 10th street, teetering at the few spots that still pandered to foot traffic. I watched life going on at an exaggerated speed. Hundreds of people lying in some estivated state of consumer activity, seeking bargains with their heat pits and striking with closed eye when the time is right to save.
Bells clinked and feet patted down sticky sidewalks. Holiday employees vied for attention, leering from behind red velvet or musty beards, driving us all out of our minds with those bells.
Somewhere among the whole dance of over stimulation; someone, somehow, knew that it was all getting too out of control. To many arms slinging money, and stooping for change, and grabbing the last doll or dump truck effigy. Too many eyes darting like protective mothers, but with their eggs at home!
His bell landed with a thud on the sanded pavement. I turned to pan upward on lavish figure. Sandals and a Santa suit, with a worn canvas shirt under cheap rouge velour, this was the anti-Clause. We were collectively awed.
With no interruption in the procession of events, he stooped with eyes upon the crowd. He inspected with a half turn the bent dome of brass, and then with a slowly building beat began the chiming again, though different. Now instead of a humble grin and an urge to put your change in his melancholy bucket roja, he balked the attempts with his body language. His free hand passed in slow motion before our astonished eyes and plunged to the wrist in dimes, nickels and such; the occasional folded bill and numerous glued together pennies.
“Help the Needy!?” he screamed out with a questioning anger.
“You are the Needy!”
Nobody prepared for this; they all began to fall from ranks, mothers grabbing children, any children, running for their lives.
The bell soared over the crowd and skittered across asphalt, under cars and out of our minds. Hands reaped the bucket, our new Santa wild with glory, grinning maniacally and tossing handfuls of dirty discarded change into the air to land on the terrified and amazed alike.
I must admit, I laughed like a delighted child in the rain; even if it was a rain of snotty pocket metal. Our new Santa preached against this breed of moral ambiguity that we believe with all our little heart in. He said take your fucking bread crumbs and come back when your strong enough to help anyone at all.
I backed up a step to avoid another rush of the infuriated and could not help brush shoulders with a dark haired girl.
“You like the show?” She quipped, taking the bump in stride and using the opportunity.
“It is a delightfully right way to start the evening.”
She smiled and in taking my hand we walked past all the disgusted folks who raised their hands in anger; who swear at he who dares interrupt them with only 20 shopping days ‘till Christmas.
She told me first about the Navaho Indian tribe, right out of the blue. Not with an eye of reverence, but just alluded to their customs and intricacies in a way that made me wonder how our culture would be described in a thousand years by some prudish history novel. We laughed and compared, deconstructing societies heavy blocks one by one.
It was strange how all her stories seemed to say to me “we are not just the byproducts of society.” How right she was, because watching the growing craziness from the truck stop window was enough to prove what happens when a single mask is let down.
“They worshiped the sun… But not as a god you see, more of a…”
“Respect? Acknowledgement?” I would fire back.
“Maybe that’s important…”
“What’s left to respect...? Ourselves?” I quipped with a furrowed grin, letting out my laughter.
All she could do was laugh, and carry me on with her, until we had every other restaurant goer gawking in our direction. We seemed to say “Of course not”, and that was enough of a philosophy for us.
Strangely we all met later at the truck stop. Our sad red clown staggered in, tired from performing, and we invited him down with a knowing nod. We talked about love, wealth and the scrambled eggs. He left that night as we sat in refracted street lighting and we tried to make him out through the window glare. My companion though she heard hoof beats as he sped away from the store, but I swear it was an old brown Vespa scooter. Either way, the meaning is what we make of it as growing brooding individuals. I for one will be leaving out chili and hash browns for my new Santa hero this year; albeit he might just be on the road instead, his haver sack full of clean underwear and no shiny toys for Mr. Johny.
At least he has my goddamn respect, as we both pull at the same strings and padlocks, trying to let ourselves out of that big cold box called complacency.
And as for the Navaho…
And maybe life was right. Perhaps if it read in bold letters on my lapel “how’s my living”, I would get what you really think of it all on some tidy 1-800 voice mail. A good antiseptic tiding from across the phone might just kick it all into shape; let me know really what I was doing wrong.
Really, how many times can you fool yourself into thinking how different a relationship will be next time? Every time a great dance ends, you remind yourself of the things you learned, things you won’t yell again, or ways to keep a partner smiling, it all meant something… I’m sure everyone gets tired of starting over, but we can’t seem to set the brakes.
Today, none of that spoke even a whisper above the clamor of the plaza. Its open spaces were rife with the usual antiquated ideas of open air commerce. Hot dog vendors fit neatly between cell phone merchants and littered again by the occasional bible thumper. For your convenience, you could pick up god and a new pair of ray bans today, and you didn’t even know who to thank.
That was my stroll down 10th street, teetering at the few spots that still pandered to foot traffic. I watched life going on at an exaggerated speed. Hundreds of people lying in some estivated state of consumer activity, seeking bargains with their heat pits and striking with closed eye when the time is right to save.
Bells clinked and feet patted down sticky sidewalks. Holiday employees vied for attention, leering from behind red velvet or musty beards, driving us all out of our minds with those bells.
Somewhere among the whole dance of over stimulation; someone, somehow, knew that it was all getting too out of control. To many arms slinging money, and stooping for change, and grabbing the last doll or dump truck effigy. Too many eyes darting like protective mothers, but with their eggs at home!
His bell landed with a thud on the sanded pavement. I turned to pan upward on lavish figure. Sandals and a Santa suit, with a worn canvas shirt under cheap rouge velour, this was the anti-Clause. We were collectively awed.
With no interruption in the procession of events, he stooped with eyes upon the crowd. He inspected with a half turn the bent dome of brass, and then with a slowly building beat began the chiming again, though different. Now instead of a humble grin and an urge to put your change in his melancholy bucket roja, he balked the attempts with his body language. His free hand passed in slow motion before our astonished eyes and plunged to the wrist in dimes, nickels and such; the occasional folded bill and numerous glued together pennies.
“Help the Needy!?” he screamed out with a questioning anger.
“You are the Needy!”
Nobody prepared for this; they all began to fall from ranks, mothers grabbing children, any children, running for their lives.
The bell soared over the crowd and skittered across asphalt, under cars and out of our minds. Hands reaped the bucket, our new Santa wild with glory, grinning maniacally and tossing handfuls of dirty discarded change into the air to land on the terrified and amazed alike.
I must admit, I laughed like a delighted child in the rain; even if it was a rain of snotty pocket metal. Our new Santa preached against this breed of moral ambiguity that we believe with all our little heart in. He said take your fucking bread crumbs and come back when your strong enough to help anyone at all.
I backed up a step to avoid another rush of the infuriated and could not help brush shoulders with a dark haired girl.
“You like the show?” She quipped, taking the bump in stride and using the opportunity.
“It is a delightfully right way to start the evening.”
She smiled and in taking my hand we walked past all the disgusted folks who raised their hands in anger; who swear at he who dares interrupt them with only 20 shopping days ‘till Christmas.
She told me first about the Navaho Indian tribe, right out of the blue. Not with an eye of reverence, but just alluded to their customs and intricacies in a way that made me wonder how our culture would be described in a thousand years by some prudish history novel. We laughed and compared, deconstructing societies heavy blocks one by one.
It was strange how all her stories seemed to say to me “we are not just the byproducts of society.” How right she was, because watching the growing craziness from the truck stop window was enough to prove what happens when a single mask is let down.
“They worshiped the sun… But not as a god you see, more of a…”
“Respect? Acknowledgement?” I would fire back.
“Maybe that’s important…”
“What’s left to respect...? Ourselves?” I quipped with a furrowed grin, letting out my laughter.
All she could do was laugh, and carry me on with her, until we had every other restaurant goer gawking in our direction. We seemed to say “Of course not”, and that was enough of a philosophy for us.
Strangely we all met later at the truck stop. Our sad red clown staggered in, tired from performing, and we invited him down with a knowing nod. We talked about love, wealth and the scrambled eggs. He left that night as we sat in refracted street lighting and we tried to make him out through the window glare. My companion though she heard hoof beats as he sped away from the store, but I swear it was an old brown Vespa scooter. Either way, the meaning is what we make of it as growing brooding individuals. I for one will be leaving out chili and hash browns for my new Santa hero this year; albeit he might just be on the road instead, his haver sack full of clean underwear and no shiny toys for Mr. Johny.
At least he has my goddamn respect, as we both pull at the same strings and padlocks, trying to let ourselves out of that big cold box called complacency.
And as for the Navaho…
Thursday, November 11, 2004
Jesus Killed the Kennedy's
When Jesus Christ killed the Kennedy’s,
He sat both on rooftops and window ledges to get the shot just right,
And the world turned just a bit slower,
As a shot rang out to bounce across decades,
To fell a plane and scatter grey matter in trace amounts across an old parade car,
The cross now on heads as they jolt pass at less than holy speeds,
Waiting for the thunder to consume a life,
To put them in the ground.
When Christ first selected a weapon that day,
It was without dread or lackluster to duty,
Perhaps he felt for Cuba or was far too similar to junior,
He waited for the moment to strike,
To take them from their thrones.
When Jesus killed the Kennedy’s,
It’s confirmed that he was not out of town enjoying the seasons,
But that he harbored and meditated with malign contempt,
To reduce to none a competitive trinity,
One that allied with free market instead of free will,
Not that their parity was adverse,
But there is no reasoning with religion some days.
The day that Jesus killed the Kennedy’s,
The Pope said somebody needs to take that boy out,
He meant Jesus,
I’m assuming he went too far my lord,
This question was answered with a nod,
Nobody moved because they all knew,
There is no reasoning with religion some days.
The day Jesus stalked the streets for his hiding spot,
The day the Vatican sat on their hands,
The day the Kennedy’s groomed and bathed and practiced their wave,
The day America waited for a moment they could all share together
The day we waited for something big to change our lives
The day the son of a myth discharged a weapon in public and then ran-ran-ran.
The plane went down and everyone said awwwwww,
All this metal and shattered family dreams,
And Jacqueline wept for the attonment of the inevitable,
And Jesus forgave himself…
He sat both on rooftops and window ledges to get the shot just right,
And the world turned just a bit slower,
As a shot rang out to bounce across decades,
To fell a plane and scatter grey matter in trace amounts across an old parade car,
The cross now on heads as they jolt pass at less than holy speeds,
Waiting for the thunder to consume a life,
To put them in the ground.
When Christ first selected a weapon that day,
It was without dread or lackluster to duty,
Perhaps he felt for Cuba or was far too similar to junior,
He waited for the moment to strike,
To take them from their thrones.
When Jesus killed the Kennedy’s,
It’s confirmed that he was not out of town enjoying the seasons,
But that he harbored and meditated with malign contempt,
To reduce to none a competitive trinity,
One that allied with free market instead of free will,
Not that their parity was adverse,
But there is no reasoning with religion some days.
The day that Jesus killed the Kennedy’s,
The Pope said somebody needs to take that boy out,
He meant Jesus,
I’m assuming he went too far my lord,
This question was answered with a nod,
Nobody moved because they all knew,
There is no reasoning with religion some days.
The day Jesus stalked the streets for his hiding spot,
The day the Vatican sat on their hands,
The day the Kennedy’s groomed and bathed and practiced their wave,
The day America waited for a moment they could all share together
The day we waited for something big to change our lives
The day the son of a myth discharged a weapon in public and then ran-ran-ran.
The plane went down and everyone said awwwwww,
All this metal and shattered family dreams,
And Jacqueline wept for the attonment of the inevitable,
And Jesus forgave himself…
Tuesday, November 02, 2004
My kind of people
I think there are two types of people that sit alone in coffee shops. The depressed; and the depressed and waiting for someone. They sit in lounges and on poolsides too, and maybe those are just the two types of people to begin with.
You can stroll into that new city brimming with hope but the essence and draw of life will eventually let you know that these little things you do are just a distraction from what eats you inside.
Or maybe im just less hopeful than the people that frow in nobodys direction as I speed past their car windows and groping headlights. Maybe I take shit too seriously and convert their passive stares into angst and a wholly deprived mode of mind, I succumb to the projection of state and boil about what bad news they just got or how within that situation I would be unable to survive.
Truth is that we are all equally unable to survive it all, and maybe thats why we wait in coffee shops and hope for someone to come wake us up. The caffeine cant do a good enough job of keeping us awake, and I can understand that, because we are purposely slipping away, slinking under our chairs for the pity of humanity, avaoiding glares and shedding small talk just to devote full attention to those heavy doors that any moment could swing open and deliver our next new reason to live.
You can stroll into that new city brimming with hope but the essence and draw of life will eventually let you know that these little things you do are just a distraction from what eats you inside.
Or maybe im just less hopeful than the people that frow in nobodys direction as I speed past their car windows and groping headlights. Maybe I take shit too seriously and convert their passive stares into angst and a wholly deprived mode of mind, I succumb to the projection of state and boil about what bad news they just got or how within that situation I would be unable to survive.
Truth is that we are all equally unable to survive it all, and maybe thats why we wait in coffee shops and hope for someone to come wake us up. The caffeine cant do a good enough job of keeping us awake, and I can understand that, because we are purposely slipping away, slinking under our chairs for the pity of humanity, avaoiding glares and shedding small talk just to devote full attention to those heavy doors that any moment could swing open and deliver our next new reason to live.
Hulk in Pants
Its Halloween, and I am celebrating the one year aniversary of having lost myself to the girl i should have grown old with. Isnt it funny to hear other people say cathartic shit like that, pretending they know what love and hurt and jealousy are. Things are different this year, in fact everything is different. She sits on my mind as an old mistake, my home is a brick fortress with the hounds of god at the doors, my job is a delight of chemicals and creativity, my sex life as dry as the Sahara, my local language profficency nill, and the rest of the world just wrapped up in those preoccupations. The only consistent field is of course the bills and radical debt that it took to catapult me half way across the united states and into this derivation land concieved of a wandering bastard of Mexico and some lost band of Aztec mystics.
---
The funny part about horror movies is that when a man turns into a monster, or some elisive transformation renders an akward 130 pound lout into a sneering beast, the clothing rips off of him with such ferocity. You see close ups of buttons popping and shirt sleeves being wrent by the horrible transmuting flesh and muscle.
Strangly though, the byproduct is always some rippling green monstrosity in Capris.
Was this fashoon trend inspired by the hulk himself, or countless wolfman concepts? Or instead, has the practical intergrity and inherent indestructability of Capris leggings been shamelessly advertised since even before the ilk of Mary Shelly.
Some would argue with me that depending on the era, transformation garb has also included various sub-species of Shorts and Jams. Let us not forget though that they are still well within the fatherly genus of incomplete leg coverings, so rests my point.
This does nothing but force me into wondering why for once cannot Frankensteins abbomination be complete with a a frankensteinian cock, and cater not the the censors who would have you believe that the mystical world of the supernatural is too uptight to show some werewolf vaginas or cursed mummy tits.
Dont tell me it would be another million or so in special effects just to give the Hulk some big green jello balls. Its fot the love of believability anyhow. Who can go to a film and be drawn into the storyline when they see a perfectly good fast motion steroid engorgement go sour with the tacky irony of granny bloomers being the cape of their new super hero.
Now for the record, I dont want to see King Kong bat planes out of the sky with his ding-dong, or for that matter see another bare actors ass on my screen (Ill leave that love for my mother and Patrick Swazey), but please people, I for one know that with balls like the Hulks, he is bound to skip the Capris and instead battle for the fate of the earth in some nice loose fitting sweat pants...
---
The funny part about horror movies is that when a man turns into a monster, or some elisive transformation renders an akward 130 pound lout into a sneering beast, the clothing rips off of him with such ferocity. You see close ups of buttons popping and shirt sleeves being wrent by the horrible transmuting flesh and muscle.
Strangly though, the byproduct is always some rippling green monstrosity in Capris.
Was this fashoon trend inspired by the hulk himself, or countless wolfman concepts? Or instead, has the practical intergrity and inherent indestructability of Capris leggings been shamelessly advertised since even before the ilk of Mary Shelly.
Some would argue with me that depending on the era, transformation garb has also included various sub-species of Shorts and Jams. Let us not forget though that they are still well within the fatherly genus of incomplete leg coverings, so rests my point.
This does nothing but force me into wondering why for once cannot Frankensteins abbomination be complete with a a frankensteinian cock, and cater not the the censors who would have you believe that the mystical world of the supernatural is too uptight to show some werewolf vaginas or cursed mummy tits.
Dont tell me it would be another million or so in special effects just to give the Hulk some big green jello balls. Its fot the love of believability anyhow. Who can go to a film and be drawn into the storyline when they see a perfectly good fast motion steroid engorgement go sour with the tacky irony of granny bloomers being the cape of their new super hero.
Now for the record, I dont want to see King Kong bat planes out of the sky with his ding-dong, or for that matter see another bare actors ass on my screen (Ill leave that love for my mother and Patrick Swazey), but please people, I for one know that with balls like the Hulks, he is bound to skip the Capris and instead battle for the fate of the earth in some nice loose fitting sweat pants...
Monday, October 04, 2004
Hand me that gas mask, you bastard.
In a large arena, people crammed and horribly packed, stuffed together in one space like... well, people. Tight formations of swarming mouths and tongues oscilating like peterbed flagella. We want a social hero, we want a social hero; they chant. Much to their chagrin there is a figure pulling in from the murky recess of the stage. Chant, chant!
His dark suit makes his pasty skin appear ever the bit more pallid, and a doctor trained in early 1900 diseases might just remember this presentation and walk into a benjamin moore in some distant and not so 3rd world area and pick out a half gallon can of a pre mixed shade of tuberculosis dry wall paint, laugh his damn hardest at the shimmering paleness of his memory and whoosh off to paint his house.
Speak oh wonder of the free world. In a slight of law rendition of liberty, deliver my trangressions to the world of fretfully illegal and grant me the morality I would otherwise lack. Tell me that masturbation is murder, just like dashing fresh babies on the rocks. Tell me the hole is unholy and speak so effectively about the donning of the rubber cap. Tell me disease is punishment for living in sin, and that florida has hurricanes because its foggies were up to something immoral.
Ok, maybe you wont exactly say all of that. But when I ask you, you might say "makes you wonder though".
Fire up the revolution baby. Its a good day to sleep in; and to touch yourself...
His dark suit makes his pasty skin appear ever the bit more pallid, and a doctor trained in early 1900 diseases might just remember this presentation and walk into a benjamin moore in some distant and not so 3rd world area and pick out a half gallon can of a pre mixed shade of tuberculosis dry wall paint, laugh his damn hardest at the shimmering paleness of his memory and whoosh off to paint his house.
Speak oh wonder of the free world. In a slight of law rendition of liberty, deliver my trangressions to the world of fretfully illegal and grant me the morality I would otherwise lack. Tell me that masturbation is murder, just like dashing fresh babies on the rocks. Tell me the hole is unholy and speak so effectively about the donning of the rubber cap. Tell me disease is punishment for living in sin, and that florida has hurricanes because its foggies were up to something immoral.
Ok, maybe you wont exactly say all of that. But when I ask you, you might say "makes you wonder though".
Fire up the revolution baby. Its a good day to sleep in; and to touch yourself...
Saturday, September 25, 2004
Just smuggling fruit
Ive begun work on my first spanish movie. Am I that moved by the place and the culture and the language that I want to tackle it head on and toss my creative juice into speaking such tongue in a feature length amateur film? You are damned right!
Perhaps shooting will begin tommorow, in the summery haze of morning, trooping through cacti plastered fields with tripods and sweaty equipment bags holding smiles just long enough to get that shot just right. Im excited.
So look for it folks, "El Arbol de Regalos, A film about young love, selfless giving, and Mexican fruit smuggling"...
After that, just maybe Mexico City, and if we make it out alive and with our gear we will have a story to tell the world.
!Viva Mexico!
Perhaps shooting will begin tommorow, in the summery haze of morning, trooping through cacti plastered fields with tripods and sweaty equipment bags holding smiles just long enough to get that shot just right. Im excited.
So look for it folks, "El Arbol de Regalos, A film about young love, selfless giving, and Mexican fruit smuggling"...
After that, just maybe Mexico City, and if we make it out alive and with our gear we will have a story to tell the world.
!Viva Mexico!
Wednesday, September 22, 2004
Carry on, Carry on dancing…
Let the music begin; and to my surprise it is the Mariachi. A strange new set of rules when you cross the border and into something a bit more substantial than a crappy country garage band filled to their brim with the BUD ON TAP ordered for the very special occasion/wedding. The Mariachi are so damn unique to themselves, hence my intrigue.
Having worked for a certain company that involves itself with social occasions, I have been exposed to a gamut of entertainment experiences. I can tell you when the thought out toss of hair by a neurotic Quinceaneras mother can mean; the cake will be cut in five minutes, get your cameras ready.
Then I hunch in the corner, secretly zooming in on your face to see what you might be eating. I might experiment a bit with night shot to get a glimpse of a bra line through a diaphanous black dress, scarcely a nipple but the art is imperfect anyhow. Light plays tricks indeed, but nothing that godlike. Sometimes invited to eat; never the cake though. Ill fill up on dinner rolls and inscribed valentine mints. Ill try the chicken entrée and endless iced teas, gets warm lugging this equipment around.
Those are all bland facts compared to the capacity for voyeurism. Image you pay said company to send me on a paid trip with a bag full of electrical voyeurisms; to your precious wedding/birthday/someday I want to film a divorce. I show up and am immediately an extended member of the family. Hence, I dine with you, meet all the family, see the girls baby pictures that stretch all the way back to bloody. I hear the jokes, delight when you dance and lip sync, and laugh on the inside when you have five too many margaritas, do a conga line, lose you shoe and fall on your head. Why laugh on the outside, right? Because video is forever, and that’s laughter enough.
So enough of my poor Spanish to get through and its midnight, time to pack it up and ship it out. By then the Padrino’s are a bit brandied up and need not babysitting for they are practically pickles. Give the thanks, and say goodbye to your instant family forever, or until some other fine young Hija ripens to age or gets a rock on her finger. See you all again someday, different time, different popular restaurant, and certainly a new and unique variation of “El Mariachi Loco”.
Having worked for a certain company that involves itself with social occasions, I have been exposed to a gamut of entertainment experiences. I can tell you when the thought out toss of hair by a neurotic Quinceaneras mother can mean; the cake will be cut in five minutes, get your cameras ready.
Then I hunch in the corner, secretly zooming in on your face to see what you might be eating. I might experiment a bit with night shot to get a glimpse of a bra line through a diaphanous black dress, scarcely a nipple but the art is imperfect anyhow. Light plays tricks indeed, but nothing that godlike. Sometimes invited to eat; never the cake though. Ill fill up on dinner rolls and inscribed valentine mints. Ill try the chicken entrée and endless iced teas, gets warm lugging this equipment around.
Those are all bland facts compared to the capacity for voyeurism. Image you pay said company to send me on a paid trip with a bag full of electrical voyeurisms; to your precious wedding/birthday/someday I want to film a divorce. I show up and am immediately an extended member of the family. Hence, I dine with you, meet all the family, see the girls baby pictures that stretch all the way back to bloody. I hear the jokes, delight when you dance and lip sync, and laugh on the inside when you have five too many margaritas, do a conga line, lose you shoe and fall on your head. Why laugh on the outside, right? Because video is forever, and that’s laughter enough.
So enough of my poor Spanish to get through and its midnight, time to pack it up and ship it out. By then the Padrino’s are a bit brandied up and need not babysitting for they are practically pickles. Give the thanks, and say goodbye to your instant family forever, or until some other fine young Hija ripens to age or gets a rock on her finger. See you all again someday, different time, different popular restaurant, and certainly a new and unique variation of “El Mariachi Loco”.
Saturday, September 11, 2004
The Stoop
For all I know, we are in unison on the corner of some dusty street, miles and miles apart, sun setting and groping its last rays over our booze afflicted bodies. For everything I don't know, there is a sign somewhere pointing to the inevitable.
Without being able to see you, I can only imagine that we are together trapped in such a foreboding isolation. I can only dream that we participate in a breed of longing that only timeless lovers can summon.
I can only sit here, and with baited breath and intoxicated influence, hope to affect somehow the weave of fabric that brings back what im lastly kept from.
Its difficult to separate every emotion and every body. Its a complication to now attempt to draw from each experience as is own, as though untainted by experience and the million hormone saturated smootches. Its difficult to remember names and faces as much as just the feeling of being cared for. It comes to this eventually, when I can no longer struggle for the idealism of love and instead merge the senseless concepts thereof to make out of the clay of harsh lust a golem of satisfaction.
As though your hair spilled blonde or black on a pillow or against a wall. Whether your hands just barely fit in mine, or were pinned by the weight of my hips to yours. Like your eyes reflected so much as an ocean, or beamed like polished tiger eye, or even cut frantically out of emerald brilliance.
All experience as one lusty experiment, one haughty last revisit to sexy land. Each plummet into rapture as ravishing as the first, each beat and rhyme drummed out by crotches in perfect rhythm structure.
I can barely recall the details of a single body as I remember the sum of all.
It could still be you I see in distant whirls of the plains dust. It could be your car or your face or your voice, all found in some inconspicuously public location.
It still will all disappear under the weight of the earth, yet only to me bears a force of meaning. Only to me will your voice hold that polished ring, so don't let the romancers fool you. Do you think you will be as beautiful to anyone else, after having wasted so much on me?
So much decided as we sat on that stoop together, in my imagination anyhow, some two thousand miles apart. So much I lost to time, that I still let slip away to the laziness of being sad.
Yet there is a sadness to knowing that I cant be complete, or that happiness is only found in myself, because I fear that I have given that gift away at some somber gathering, at a party you organized so long ago. You got all my beloved people together, made my favorite party snacks and then spiked the punch with...
I have still forgotten how to take that one step forward, and that's the moral of our love.
Without being able to see you, I can only imagine that we are together trapped in such a foreboding isolation. I can only dream that we participate in a breed of longing that only timeless lovers can summon.
I can only sit here, and with baited breath and intoxicated influence, hope to affect somehow the weave of fabric that brings back what im lastly kept from.
Its difficult to separate every emotion and every body. Its a complication to now attempt to draw from each experience as is own, as though untainted by experience and the million hormone saturated smootches. Its difficult to remember names and faces as much as just the feeling of being cared for. It comes to this eventually, when I can no longer struggle for the idealism of love and instead merge the senseless concepts thereof to make out of the clay of harsh lust a golem of satisfaction.
As though your hair spilled blonde or black on a pillow or against a wall. Whether your hands just barely fit in mine, or were pinned by the weight of my hips to yours. Like your eyes reflected so much as an ocean, or beamed like polished tiger eye, or even cut frantically out of emerald brilliance.
All experience as one lusty experiment, one haughty last revisit to sexy land. Each plummet into rapture as ravishing as the first, each beat and rhyme drummed out by crotches in perfect rhythm structure.
I can barely recall the details of a single body as I remember the sum of all.
It could still be you I see in distant whirls of the plains dust. It could be your car or your face or your voice, all found in some inconspicuously public location.
It still will all disappear under the weight of the earth, yet only to me bears a force of meaning. Only to me will your voice hold that polished ring, so don't let the romancers fool you. Do you think you will be as beautiful to anyone else, after having wasted so much on me?
So much decided as we sat on that stoop together, in my imagination anyhow, some two thousand miles apart. So much I lost to time, that I still let slip away to the laziness of being sad.
Yet there is a sadness to knowing that I cant be complete, or that happiness is only found in myself, because I fear that I have given that gift away at some somber gathering, at a party you organized so long ago. You got all my beloved people together, made my favorite party snacks and then spiked the punch with...
I have still forgotten how to take that one step forward, and that's the moral of our love.
Sunday, September 05, 2004
War looms unpredictable,
War looms unpredictable,
Balmy clouds forcing me into despicable liaison,
With abandoned and unkempt shelter,
With roofs like pinhole cameras,
Catching all the broken light,
That sputters over milk white structures,
Perhaps vermillion when the sun is downing,
When the cameras need external brilliance,
To shutter their imaginary glass eyes,
To forever preserve,
To assist cranial perspectives,
To adapt my timid frame to the surroundings.
A day of waking from tiredness,
Restless concepts built from a frantic January,
That follow me through more months and mornings than that,
And you can rub your eyes to give greeting,
Or get meaning through voyeuring,
Old slatted walls leave holes where plaster is bled out by rain,
Watch them walk and dance and pray,
See them dress.
Then we are getting married…
There is not a cake, imagine that,
But what’s under that veil?
That… shroud?
I might be losing clarity.
It’s HIM under that cloth,
I nonchalantly toss aside the fabric,
It looks like a blue bed sheet,
And it’s HIM beneath it.
I think, boy, why are you at my wedding,
Why are you at my most sacred day of union?
But neither my hands nor face respond to such logic,
Because I’m cutting him up with silverware,
I’m putting cake-like slices of him on platters for guests.
I feed a piece to my beloved bride,
And she eats a morsel with a grin,
What is this grin she is wearing?
Its reminiscence, I recognize it,
She has eaten this Goddamn cake before.
Furious at something and I’m whirling around with cake-ware,
Collapsing tables and slapping even the feeble guests,
I’m humiliated,
He has crawled inside,
He is ruining my finest moment.
Yet war looms, paltry and irresponsible,
It settles on dusty side roads,
It smokes harsh cigars,
It carries a heavy bag that jingles like loose pocket change,
It slings its dirty sack over one shoulder,
To let the other rest a while.
I’m in a tattered tuxedo,
Still running from the ruins,
That special day was built of wax impressions,
Meant only to melt with the passion of the moment.
I remember cutting your little eyes from the cake,
And every few miles a finger will find them in my breast pocket,
I’ll make sure they remain,
Two bead-like brown eyes,
Fixed pupils like eminent train wrecks,
Can’t help but stare at them,
Maybe that was her problem too,
To fall forever into their meaning,
I just have to see what she wanted with them…
I’m surprised you could keep up all those years,
It’s amazing the time you spent traveling,
From state to state,
In all of our little apartments,
Maybe you just found some niche in my brain,
And stuck there steadfast,
Waiting for the moment to strike.
I’m broken as I wander the black highway,
Sputtering recitations and problematic vows,
Screaming to hot deaf air what I knew was once love.
Because war looms in the unopened lids of my shaded eyes,
And my stares are now just as blank and unpredictable,
They are the last visual stabs of a shattered wanderer.
Balmy clouds forcing me into despicable liaison,
With abandoned and unkempt shelter,
With roofs like pinhole cameras,
Catching all the broken light,
That sputters over milk white structures,
Perhaps vermillion when the sun is downing,
When the cameras need external brilliance,
To shutter their imaginary glass eyes,
To forever preserve,
To assist cranial perspectives,
To adapt my timid frame to the surroundings.
A day of waking from tiredness,
Restless concepts built from a frantic January,
That follow me through more months and mornings than that,
And you can rub your eyes to give greeting,
Or get meaning through voyeuring,
Old slatted walls leave holes where plaster is bled out by rain,
Watch them walk and dance and pray,
See them dress.
Then we are getting married…
There is not a cake, imagine that,
But what’s under that veil?
That… shroud?
I might be losing clarity.
It’s HIM under that cloth,
I nonchalantly toss aside the fabric,
It looks like a blue bed sheet,
And it’s HIM beneath it.
I think, boy, why are you at my wedding,
Why are you at my most sacred day of union?
But neither my hands nor face respond to such logic,
Because I’m cutting him up with silverware,
I’m putting cake-like slices of him on platters for guests.
I feed a piece to my beloved bride,
And she eats a morsel with a grin,
What is this grin she is wearing?
Its reminiscence, I recognize it,
She has eaten this Goddamn cake before.
Furious at something and I’m whirling around with cake-ware,
Collapsing tables and slapping even the feeble guests,
I’m humiliated,
He has crawled inside,
He is ruining my finest moment.
Yet war looms, paltry and irresponsible,
It settles on dusty side roads,
It smokes harsh cigars,
It carries a heavy bag that jingles like loose pocket change,
It slings its dirty sack over one shoulder,
To let the other rest a while.
I’m in a tattered tuxedo,
Still running from the ruins,
That special day was built of wax impressions,
Meant only to melt with the passion of the moment.
I remember cutting your little eyes from the cake,
And every few miles a finger will find them in my breast pocket,
I’ll make sure they remain,
Two bead-like brown eyes,
Fixed pupils like eminent train wrecks,
Can’t help but stare at them,
Maybe that was her problem too,
To fall forever into their meaning,
I just have to see what she wanted with them…
I’m surprised you could keep up all those years,
It’s amazing the time you spent traveling,
From state to state,
In all of our little apartments,
Maybe you just found some niche in my brain,
And stuck there steadfast,
Waiting for the moment to strike.
I’m broken as I wander the black highway,
Sputtering recitations and problematic vows,
Screaming to hot deaf air what I knew was once love.
Because war looms in the unopened lids of my shaded eyes,
And my stares are now just as blank and unpredictable,
They are the last visual stabs of a shattered wanderer.
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