I wanna be your anti-fascist skinhead, overcoming all these Oswald Mosley posers--
not with anything blunt and heavy or sharp and fast; slice and dice, slice and dice, or smash and flatten--pancake style!--
I'd use words, plain and simple.
Try bleeding it out, with logic and reason. When that reason's obtusely denied, I'd shout it out, with blood and lung. Make the words go right through them.
So-- you gonna be mine?
Didn't you say you were from Columbus? Or was it Akron? Which side of the terminal moraine must I search, sleepless?
I've bashed such a place where everything moves through, quick-- to Chicago spewing onto the shoreline, to Charlotte nestled in the rolling hills.
Who would want to stay? How great could nowhere even be?
It came to me too late.
Nowhere is somewhere. I'd stay 'till you tell me to go. And it could be the greatest thing I'll never have.
The mosquitoes have breached Iceland!
I repeat:
THE MOSQUITOES HAVE BREACHED ICELAND!!!
Get the bug repellent, smoke them out like a muddied, battered WW1 fantasy. Drape yourself in netting, from bitten head to toe.
Call in the bombers-- make their watery abodes their resting places-- watch it glow bright in pitch darkness.
Leave no stagnant pool still or unturned. By the morning--
we take back what's ours. It's guaranteed.
Been trying to live a quiet life of abstraction--
painting the walls institutional white, sawing myself clean in half--
anything to feel lesser.
Been trying to live a quiet life of abstraction--
painting the walls institutional white, sawing myself clean in half--
anything to feel lesser.
Tonight's particular loneliness bites down deep-- as if my heart might skip all cliches, bust out of its housing and make it for the two-story window-- to a stark truth on the pavement.
There's no love out there, either.
Not in a single crack or pothole. At least, not any kind I know of.
It's tragic it found out-- with such a whisper of a--
thud.
Why do I take everything like a bullet, like a blade-- mere inches from my heart? I'd like to ask myself, tenderly:
"who hurt you? You can tell me-- we're close, right?"
The silence is telling. Like nothing's coming down. Nothing at all.
Quite the opposite--a mental stucco wall, and I'm helping you build it up to the ceiling of the world.
Helping myself dig down, further into its pit.
It doesn't feel all that therapeutic when you're fully aware of the placebo wriggling underneath, costing everything.
I'm my own plus-one at this gun and knife fight, I guess-- and I forgot them both at home.
"...you've got my back, right?"
Can you even say "evanescence" without alerting the goth kids? It's a shame--
such a word evokes an aching, crippling need to gradually merge with the fog, to walk into a forest and slowly, the insects and you become one. To sprout and grow from the dirt.
Like losing yourself in a traffic jam, backed up for years upon years-- all that metal and bone, colliding inch by inch-- or into a ravenous crowd of people, piranhas with guilt and shame, gradually devouring you whole.
To be rid of the life you lead and the people you know-- without a sound or trace. To get on that plane, on that train, and finally into that greyhound, bound for anywhere--
and from there, there's no telling. The fog has passed. The life has scattered.
I'm petitioning the abolishment of the space between minds. No more second-guessing. Now we can really get to the heart of the matter.
It'll be a bop kaballah sort of telepathy-- kinetic and lyrical, improvisational, a rawness to eat at all our well-done brains.
Pick a spot, any spot-- at Everest's peak, at Mariana's trench-- minds meld where they may.
Just two bodies, searching through each other's messy homes-- and staying for dinner, for tall tales told late into the night.
Go outside. Get the shovels. Dig me up.
Dust me off. Paint a smile on. Carry me to the wake.
Talk about me. Be honest. I know I was--
a little meh. No big thing. A basic carbon copy.
No tears. It's the thought that counts. Carry me once more.
Throw me back in. I think I've mourned enough. How about you?
We're all by the riverside, following behind. This procession's a mile wide; a dark and dreary line.
A cold, empty in-between clings to all our skin. We look up, towards Selene-- but her light has grown so dim.
I see his light, and nothing else-- a stoic Psychopompos. He said to us "all will be well"-- what God would break a promise?
Don't look now, but we might be puppets-- strung up by a machine, running on that
good 'ol Texas tea.
Spasming muscles and breaking bones in the name of
nothing.
It's not amused. Not vindictive-- nothing sick like that. But a sickness, still.
A virus spreading through carbon emissions, sticking to the bottoms of Wall Street broker's shoes.
Fuel to burn alive the hearts of a thousand fresh enlisted, as they charge
once more, unto the breach.
We refined it, treated it like damned royalty. Molded it to be everything.
And here we are-- it's inside of you. It's inside of me.
It's forcing us to smile, again.
The constantly shifting gap between a deep, depressing winter and a relentless, crematory summer, is this disgusting spring--
newborn life squirming in too many corners and crevices.
I've known that infant state, I play it out each time-- the brass knuckles of denial beat me to certain death.
Then a bright light-- shapes of strangers I don't know, a scent of sterility and illness. Bare assed, cold, wet, and pleading to get back in.
I never asked for this-- smacking the feeling into me, cutting off bits I might need.
The setup, the punchline-- canned laughter erupting over the PA-- but nothing swells inside me.
I get pushed out the door, with the bill and a note: "Have a nice trip -- see you next fall."
Road tripping to find a cheap gallon of gas. A perverse monotony hangs-- and a split-second pass into the oncoming lane, 'cause this fucker won't move his ass.
So-- let's go.
Fate grips the wheel and gets to the dirty task. We barrel towards each other-- two jokes of empty mass. We stare down the headlights, too proud to react-- and before it's even over, we shatter like glass.
So-- let's go!
Or we never leave the house-- just burn all our cash in a dog-day heat wave; our sweaty miseries clash. Dreaming of the drive that could've been our last. But here's the catch-- we still crash.
So-- let's-- gooo!!!
Oh, to feel the universal ache of a culturally dead downtown-- consenting to a graceful swan dive into the sewer, out to the bay.
Not a beleaguered body in sight. Either they faked their deaths and ran, or hid away and focused on the cracks in their ceilings, on the walls.
Everyday's a Tuesday, brushed off into the landfill, the graveyard. Everybody's perpetually working for their retirement party.
The potpourri smells of artificial "yaaas". The public space reeks of private property.
In the distance, the machine towers seem so lively--so carefree. Humming out the millennium-- unbothered, undeterred.
No one's livid enough to hum back, to lift their toes an inch-- they're all floating on the water, past the horizon, and pulled under.
What if Halley's comet really did eat all the oxygen-- like a fucking hog, all in one go?
Or it let one rip from its tail, a real bitter rot, and the fumes put us into sugar maple caskets?
Or did it just impact-- full force, no holding back--
and my life is the fever dream, last second flashes of some chartered accountant from the Upper Peninsula?
What a tale to end on...
If faking tactfulness is an art form, then call me Miles Davis.
But over the years, I've slowly noticed-- I've grown a bit flat.
Off-tempo. Out of breath.
Where'd the discipline-- the soul-- wander off to?
If I knew-- could I follow?
Or is that departure a clear answer, in a silent way?
We ran out of space on the old hard drive, mounted inside the skull, decades ago--
but there's more. There's always more.
It's hogging up the bandwidth, clogging up the spam folder-- I'm afraid to even look anymore, and find the amount at ∞.
I can't spot the real article from the attention-seeking fake-- like trying to find Waldo in an earthquake scene,
but he was never there. He was in a book about Buddhism at a Barnes and Noble, the whole time.
Or so the image promises...
I wonder how much is left? You think I'd know the details, but life isn't as easy as blowing a hole in the ground--
seeing what comes out. It's a backbreaking race to the bottom.
I've been mining for that authentic, no-nonsense heart of gold; transcribing a journey full of duds of iron and coal.
No diamonds. They don't belong to me, and I don't belong to them.
All I've found are remains of prospectors before me-- all speaking a different tongue, but all leaving behind
dusty bones, dusty tomes.
I take their words like flawed scripture, while writing my own-- as I keep going
further and farther down.
Until my lungs collapse like buttresses, and the light shrinks down to a pupil in the dark.
From above, the air is free, the days don't break a broken spirit-- and the gold is everywhere.