Buble Theatre

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, and I stumbled drunkenly along the former, not knowing whether my feet were actually in motion or if I was being teleported in micro-increments that gave the appearance of a steady gait. Either way, I pushed forward. Yes, it was a push, in the sense that all great explorers are pushing rather than pulling. Disheveled natives with razed crop-lands and sundered pacts involving crafting beads and the entireties of boroughs would disagree and say that indeed there was vigorous pulling involved in successful conquest, but for the purposes of imperialism, we will overlook the brutes.
So, the former road. I say that I stumbled drunkenly along it, but it’s obvious to the intoxicated mind that one is never really alone. That being said, I was leading the way for an equally hazy Jeff Bridges and the ghost of one Richard Nixon, although my sources, coincidentally his sources, say the apparition was just a figment of my imagination (or the milligrams of an unknown substance Bridges and I happened upon on the side of a lonely lamp-post).
It was at the moment of retrieval that I realized two facts; all lamp-posts happened upon from twilight through breakfast are lonely, it’s a quantum certainty, like moldy jam and rubber-ducks going underused. The second fact was that upon finding unknown substance without means of discovering its original purpose, one must consume or imbibe it in the name of science. We did.
Now, Bridges always has this cocky smile on his face, you know, the curled-grin that pushes up on his pseudo-train robber mustache and portrays a thousand different types of idiocy. Well, that grin disappeared on digestive impact and was supplanted by a thin line of mingled philosophic questioning and wondering whether the price is right is shown in any other countries than that of its origin (it is).
I couldn’t really pinpoint why I was so intently focused on the muscular morphing of said Jeff Bridges, but I was later thankful that my eyes were fixed on him rather than turned inwardly. Introspection can be a deadly thing. So can unknown substances, but this was science for God’s sakes (and God’s sakes can actually be quite deadly as well, but I figured the science cancelled any danger out).
Back to the future present tense, though. I could tell those years of study at generically atavistic and old fashioned university in a cozy valley had done me well, for I could feel the chemical reactions firing off as I slid through the former road. That was the true value of education, not progress, but being able to truly sense how and when and where and why drugs were making you want to climb inside a hermit crab’s shell and burst from within like a revolutionary crustacean refusing the limitless trappings of evolution.
Enough of crabs and careening and caring, it should be enough to say that I had no idea where I was or who I was, and like the infernal beast of anglo-saxon terror, I only had wistfully regretful men with grey-flaked beards to compare myself against. Bridges instead of Hrothgar, and Nixon in the place of Hrothulf. Ghost Nixon, for the flesh of the original is being consumed by secret space-tibetans, or something of the like, according to recent papers.
As I-we sloshed through the swampy earth of the former road, we conversed about nothing-really, but if one was to sit at the very periphery of our conversation and only hear the rapidity and sense of exigency, well then it would transcend into quite-something-if-I-may-say, and you very well may. So the nothing-really and something-sometimes floated around our heads in bubbles of static electricity and dynamic introspection, as to say, hey, I understand that I’m supposed to be carrying on a conversation with grim-Bridges and ghost-Nixon, but I’m actually concerned with my future and forgetting my past and walking in the present.
“What is the actual structure?” Asked dour Bridges with a sense of urgency.
The surrounding forest (one must remember that all roadways at night must be surrounded by woods of some sort to allow for tricky goat-men to jump out and ask you riddles and/or for a few dollars) loomed around us like it was waiting for us to separate from a group of girl-friends so that it could sweatily ask us to prom.
“Of what?” I provided as a sequel, and hopefully, a sieve for his initially foggy query.
“The fucking road, man, the road,” He added before throwing his head from side to side at the forest as if it were going to fulfill its purpose and belch out a beguiling satanist.
Well, I thought, the structure isn’t really existent, is it? I mean, the only reason we’re on this damned path is because some poet decided to describe the one less travelled by. At a certain point, doesn’t the one less travelled by become the more discussed and thus the less relevant of the two? We’re on the more travelled by, the former, and damned proud of it, albeit confused as to the physiognomy of the actual winding and shuttling of night-time philosophers and drug-consumers.
All of these questions were lost on lightbulb-on-top-of-head Bridges, who just had a particularly good idea.
“Well let’s, like, map it, man, you know for future generations and just people in general,” He ejected with the acute self-conscious sense that they were words best maintained in one’s throat and not allowed to stew in the stupidity-sensor that is reality.
No, no, no, I thought, no way to map and no impetus. Future generations could go through the journey and people in general could remain hopelessly generic and find another way of shooting through the countryside with a head full of whatever the fuck was left propped up near the habitually lonely lamppost by some prick of a deus-ex machina.
Again, my thoughts were carted into the air directly behind clueless Bridge’s skull, as neither of us had mastered telekinesis yet. His look of confusion only made me more angry than I had been when I first read Frost’s words.
“I said, or I thought quite loudly, that your idea was bad, and we aren’t going to map anything until we’re out of here and ghastly-Nixon stops whimpering,” I testily slapped at both of my idiotic companions with the force of a sheep’s will as it’s approached by the farmer with the lube and the ridiculously goofy look on his face.
Well, berated Bridges and nearly zombie-Nixon both looked chidden by God, or Todd, or whatever the hell I was named, and they shuffled by with the gusto of children slapped for wailing the under-garment details of their parents. As for the contents of their tear-ducts, bereaved Bridges and no-pulse-Nixon went by dry, as Bridges had his removed after a bout of crying he underwent at the clutches of a lost puppy, and Nixon was in that realm between death and life that was only separated by the contingency of being able to produce tears. While a few quarter-hearted dribbles plummeted down no-longer-ashamed-about-Watergate Nixon’s protruding nose and added more moisture to the soft, pastry-esque feel of the former road, back-in-business Bridges got a look on his no longer grinning face that told me he had yet another idea. The problem with Jeff was that he kept forgetting his bad ideas, which was great for his confidence, but horrible for anyone within an audible radius that was subject to his discourse on aqueduct structures to preserve the water from kiddy pools for later use as ammonia-based detergents and industrial cleaners. It was a good idea on paper, but once one figured out the total cost and bureaucratic issues of finding the occasional turd-floater, it had to be scrapped and boasting Bridges sank to the carpet for a few minutes before getting that stupid look on his face again.
And all the while, almost-whole-again Nixon kept whimpering.


Of course, it was one of the many occupational hazards accompanying a literary career that you would have critics. It still is, even beyond the grave. Unfortunately, Frost had found it wholly over-taxing to descend the pit of dirt he’d been lowered into and reconvene in the subterranean recreation center located deep below Vermont. So, without revealing too much of his humanity to those who occasionally flocked to his grave and recited bits of poetry (he dreaded this, as he was trying to shake off his rural image and reinvent himself as a rough-and-tumble beatnik without a cause), Frost would lie in his space and consider what means it took to rise from the dead. Never, as a rule of thumb however, did Frost roll over. It was the first thing they told you as you were lowered (in this case, pushed) into your intermediary resting area, in fact, if they had written it down, it would have been in chunky, bold, and nearly obnoxious lettering for maximum visibility.
And, in keeping with the strictness of this rule, Frost was having a fit after rolling for what seemed like a string of comically-enjoined minutes, thinking someone was watching and thinking, ay lads come check this out, I can make a poet squirm. Let’s just say he was nearly right and move on. Usually maggots were the sole inhabitants of Frost’s brain, but fragmented neurons were lighting fuses and signaling alert triggers to stabilize Frost’s body and maintain the regularity of a typical corpse death-style. Considering the decades of disrepair and decay, (a word corpses tended to avoid, along with every other word that required the use of functioned vocal cords) Frost’s stabilization was a tad late, but it came, and with it a multitude of questions that only a snide author huddling in the corner of a room hurling anathema at formerly relevant celebrities could answer.
It would have taken a cataclysmically critical event to flip Frost. Corpses rarely rolled over in their graves, despite popular belief, and the last time one did was when a gaggle of self-markedly clever teens put copies of the diary of Anne Frank in the religious fiction section. That little jig cost a book salesman his job and the funds for his ridiculous collection of thick-rimmed glasses. The only issue was the corpses of Anne Frank and her father were confused as to whom should roll and decided to split rolling-time to avoid the repercussions of not moving at the right time. Although they were told to never roll, which was an unwritten rule, it was a law scribbled hastily in invisible ink on stained bar napkins that if one is to ignore movement when a culturally ignorant and horribly insulting remark is made, the corpse shall be forced to go to Heaven, where it’s lutes abound and lyres afire. A good time, no doubt, if you were some magnate from the fourteenth century who got a rise from the ecclesiastical conjunction of unnecessarily elegant instruments and powdered women who refused to show a single inch of skin besides that of their ever-so-alluring faces and almost-too-tantalizing knuckles. For the other corpses, however, it was either admittance into Hell or staying in a damp pit that was appealing. Not necessarily that Heaven existed, but that in the off-chance that it did (which, in this case, it didn’t), they were sure that they’d rather take a poke in the ass every few millennia and behold the wonder that is a molten wasteland of lost truths and denied hope than be forced to listen to lutes all day. In this way, corpses were like your average 8 year old or politician.
The science behind all of these transfers and unwritten rules was that the Dukes of the afterlife constantly thumbed the edge of motivation but could never find it in themselves to commit to anything more than scratching some nether-region or casting a soul into eternal torment (a day’s work, for your average Duke). By being so assiduous in their pact to do the minimum amount of work without the man downstairs noticing, the Dukes made death a rather annoying process, more so than it was when the only means of achieving it were carrying oneself off a cliff or bludgeoning one’s head with the nearest blunt object, which, in early times, was often someone else’s head.
Keeping in mind that our Frost was still wondering who was tarnishing his name (unabashed Bridges, steadily-transforming Nixon, and I), the general cog-work and machinations of the after-life were kept steady even if balance meant no weight at all, which it did. The Devil, the black-man, Sir Shadow, Baphoment, Mephisto, Beezlbub, or if you wanted to get it proper, Stephen Edelman, sat stewing per usual. He was typically stewing for two reasons, boredom and a lack of floral diversity in Hell. It was either bleeding roses or torturously sharp tulips, and sometimes Stephen tired of this. Boredom took root in another form, which was that God had been dead for about a century and a half due to the proclamations of a severely mustachioed philosopher. This mustachioed man went by the name Nettles or something of the sort, and was dreadfully sorry for killing God, but knew that it was to be because he wrote so in an earlier book. Nettles carried a curse with him from that point-on that ensured a ridiculous amount of seizures and the number-one spot down below, which just happened to be subterranean Vermont rather than Hell (the two had very similar zip codes). What God hadn’t taken into account besides the ancient aliens that helped him get this pit of a planet up and running in the first place was that with his own death came a collapse of heaven and a redirecting of all influence into Hell. This meant that while the actual structure of the underworld remained gothically clad with brimstone and furnaces of flint, it was actually a rather pleasant place, and was considered to be one of the safest place to raise one’s kids, providing they were spawns of some babbling nether-creature, which one couldn’t immediately mark off nowadays what with online dating and portals to black realms.
So, without a big-bushy beard to direct all his anathema and bile at, the Devil, our Mr. Edelman, grew listless and to this day finds it rather painful to just sit about. God had made him to rebel, and now all he had to rebel against were the particularly terrible designs his interior fabricator had been bringing about recently and the number of Starbucks that were appearing around every pit-corner in Hell (which, at the time of this writing, is the company’s foremost market and future headquarters). Occasionally he peeps up to check up on the Dukes, who have a misconception that he actually cares what they’re doing with humans, and other times he’ll just dawdle about until he can find something to combust. Edelman wasn’t necessarily displeased that all souls were now funneled into his principality of darkness, he just felt under-appreciated. He’d never realize it, but chocolate would have instantly cleared up those feelings in an endorphin blast of hedonism. All it would have taken was a trip down to the local Starbucks.
Frost didn’t know that either, but he did know the dirt above him was loosening its putrid grip and he could better feel the crisp Vermont air. The breeze and the recent surge of flipping sparked something inside what remained of his heart, and he let out a groan that would have been poetic had it not been muffled by shifting excrement.


At the time we were obviously unsure of the point behind our plodding or the placement of said ploddage, but we felt required to do it. I figured that eventually restless Bridges and newly-formed-muscle-structure Nixon would complain, but it stayed in the realm of twitching facial hair and too-discontent-to-be-inaudible whimpering. It could easily have been the chemical reactions that forced our legs to quirk and jump and push us forward on the road-more-travelled-by-and-subsequently- neglected. It could just have easily been some ancient force taking time out of its busy schedule of making appearances in front of blind-men, who no one will believe. Said force could have been animating our legs in such a fashion that our brains were stimulated by the flowing blood and found it necessary to disparage a formerly defenseless poet. It could have been that, but that’s too convenient and probably what should have happened. Life’s too random and chaotic to follow the ley-lines of mysticism that dictate that some once slumbering entity is behind all of the events worth noting. Not to say any of this is writ-worthy, but that even if it was, it wouldn’t be made so by anything with enough mental acuity to string together plot and character development into a decent yarn. Nothing that should happen ever does if you think about it too much, a law giving sponges true supremacy in the matters of status-quo.
Nay, we plodded for reasons we would never understand, presupposing that we could understand, which, when looking into the eyes of regretfully-hollow Bridges and closer-than-ever-to-humanity Nixon, is a factor you must forgo. I, of course, could very bloody well understand, but with a brain addled by the not-too-ancient forces of supply and demand narcotics, I didn’t particularly want to. I’d rather have kept walking with my unexplained cohorts to our shared fate, and so I did.
The swampy excess that was the former road gobbled beneath us as if it were one of those interesting fellows you become friends with at work and only later realize has a domineering fetish for feet. This epiphany will of course result in you replacing all of your open-toed gear with heavily furred boats and the occasional worn-down sneaker. Your friend will forget you existed and continue his eternal search for the perfect pair of feet, not knowing that they died with Audrey Hepburn, a locally known craftswoman in Newfoundland who bore no relation to the famous actress and never stepped on any surface not crafted by her own hands. The swamp moved in such a manner, and to look down upon its jubilance and quasi-laser show of Hepburn’s weaving was too much to bear, so I snapped my hand out and lifted dangerously-amazed Bridge’s head and instructed him to look forward. Not-too-dead Nixon saw and forced his head up in a childlike sense of mimicry. Oh, childhood.
“I was a child once,” is a sentence you will rarely hear, unless you directly accuse the opposite. It’s just plain unnecessary, and linguistically we tend to circumvent such obvious statements for over-complicated ways of covering up what is actually pertinent knowledge. Instead of “I was a child once,” we’ll say, “Man, what a life,” or “Do you remember that one time I filled your bathtub with fish-hooks and watched you flail about like a sack of forgotten meat,” while perched over your late-friend’s grave. Well, we were all children once, except in the case of amicable Bridges, who nodded in agreement as I thought this, honing his telepathy on the road. I came upon him in a weird way, the kind of way that ensures friendship for life, however short said life is.
To be frank, I waited around in an empty theatre and sort of just picked him up. It was one of his movies, the name of which escapes me because I replaced that information with the necessary instructions allowing me to abuse a number of substances. Everyone had left, and as they shuttled back home and discussed the merits of the movie less and less while getting increasingly curious about that constant itching they’ve felt since last month, the spirit of the film found itself spinning back across by-ways to the theatre. Spirits have to sleep too, and film-spirits even more-so, being constant performers.
Well, after figuring this out via trial and error, it was just a matter of sitting idly in the theatre until the credits finished rolling and the film-Bridges flew back to coalesce towards the projector. I grabbed them, considering swallowing them, but decided against it and waved them around like I thought film-Bridges would appreciate. Out popped clean-shaven Bridges and from that instance until now we’ve worked on dirtying him up, from allowing his facial hair to tangle upon his face and throwing him into dumps, which is how we found now-almost-completely-human-except-for-a-few-remembrances-of-death-and-the-resignation Nixon. He was completely-ghostly Nixon then, and baleful Bridges felt his loyalty tested, but we’ve made it to the former road, and our feet felt like that’s all that really mattered. Dirtying had been successful, as could be noted by anyone that saw telepathically pleased Bridges sidle through the sludge and sniff at a particularly gruesome stain covering the entirety of this left sleeve.
As for soon-to-be-real-nixon Nixon, we weren’t really sure what his purpose was, other than to whimper and provide something for us to complain about. He had a puzzle-piece identity until a few miles ago, which is to say he had the individualism of the space where the last puzzle-piece should go. Enough contour to give it an ever-shifting name, but not enough substance to constitute being a human. There was only one instance where ferocious Bridges bit out at then-redolent-of-deli-meats Nixon, and I grabbed the back of his purposefully greasy hair and blew in his face, a tactic I gathered from a silly book about training dogs, which personally seemed like something you did when everything else in the world had resolved itself, which hadn’t happen and didn’t seem to be possible.
Recollecting all of this told me the cloud of lonely-lamppost lager was clearing, which was good in the sense that I could start to take in my surroundings more accurately. It was negative in that I couldn’t shake the feeling that always useful Bridges was probing my mind and mucking about where he didn’t belong. A good knock to his skull sufficed to end the mental invasion, and the only thing that can follow a good knock is a healthy walk, so we kept on, unawares that only a short distance away birds were clearing from the forest in the cinematically symbolic way of bellowing that something was hunting us. It really was the road more travelled by.


Frost was inflamed. Or at least he felt like it would be appropriate to feel a blaze of passion at the moment of his come-uppance. With a great shake of dirt that reminded everyone not looking of a furiously cute dog. Frost’s eyes betrayed the need for revenge, but the combination of his decomposition and shuffling was too adorable to be taken seriously. He felt like this was a good thing, and it was proven true as he blundered up to a bunch of prospective poets at the graveyard’s entrance, heard their laughter, registered that he honestly hadn’t a need to kill them, and in the name of unnecessary chaos, threw them aside while shrieking the words to “Fire and Ice,” which to the Vermontians sounded like a chorus of confused deaf people asking for directions to the nearest hardware store.
They flew apart, and having met their grimy idol, vowed to never wash their clothes again which was a pact none of them kept for more than a week as their mothers actually did the laundry. He, the renegade back from the grave, put thoughts toward changing his garb up to match the dull ferocity twanging within where his organs should have been.
“I should get some vomit colored skinny jeans, throw some obnoxiously bright shoes on my feet (without socks, of course) and a shirt that says I’m a lumberjack but I’ve retired to better understand shoddy fashion,” was the first thought that cogently passed through Frost’s half-brain, and it wasn’t the last, as visions of a trio danced across the chunky bits of eyeball he still clutched onto and further stoked his fury.
Frost hadn’t even thanked Edelman, who took it as a personal affront and raised his molten eyebrow in a facial expression that said he was too furious to care, which immediately led to the dissolution of his bitter look and a loss of what had made him angry in the first place. Edelman was on a roller-coaster ride of emotions.
Shuffling, frothing, revenge-driven Frost, however, paid even less mind to Edelman than before and the particles of non-thought burst from his head and splashed onto the brilliantly verdant Vermont grass, turning it sickly yellow and decidedly more edgy. Former Frost had a mind for quiet nights drawing up adages to nature and pastoral bliss, but Fetid Frost found it difficult to think at all, and when he managed to, memories of rolling over in his grave and taking a great offense bubbled to the surface of his consciousness and caused him to walk more briskly than any respectable zombie should.
The night plugged on endlessly, and for the purposes of a grim setting, remained that way as Frost churned toward the only place he could remember. It was a fork in the road that once inspired brilliantly unnecessary musings that would form the pride piece of every 6th grader’s literary knowledge. Former Frost has once proclaimed the amazement in having taken the road less travelled by, but Fetid Frost seemed to understand that the root of all his underground unease was treading the road more travelled by and thus less revered and in all actuality less travelled by. This confused him, so he stopped thinking for a while and let his soggily tumescent feet carry the flame of his quest to maim whoever started this nonsense.
Somewhere in the following darkness, a confused voice called out for someone named Nixon to stop whimpering.


“Stop, just stop, man,” Unduly irritable Bridges shot at now-human Nixon, who took on a life of his own through the sheer force of whimpering.
I had to agree with uncharacteristically accurate Bridges that the whimpering weighed heavily on my nerves, and having a full telepathic link ensured he got my message, whether I intended him to or not.
With a mind now regrettably clear and an eyeful of seemingly endless swampland covered by forest, I began to worry. Had I really gathered up the spirits of a film, summoned a clone of a famous actor into being, and then found a decomposed former president in the pursuit of mucking up aforementioned clone? If I had, what would my father think? Who was my father? I hoped, for the sake of convenient plot device and rising climax that it was patriarchal Bridges, but I knew deep-down it was some scruffy old git I hadn’t thought about in years. That meant Nixon couldn’t have been my mother, but the thoughts of her once constant supply of sugary sweets and the warmly inviting scent of her arms are too painful to digest and should be locked into the nothingness that is escapism.
We could hear footfalls, or footscrapes it seemed like, becoming more audible with each tensely pregnant second. A heavy sense of fate descended upon us, took a good look around, and decided it wouldn’t be too bad to roost in our minds. Nixon, now human, shifted uneasily as the slick hand of destiny struggled to tickle his back, and called out his first words.
“Goddamnit, if I can’t get Kissinger down here to fix this fucking humidity I swear to Edelman I will kick Agnew in the nuts next time I see him. And who the fuck are you?” He gibbered with the tenacity of someone who talked via the swaying of jowls and the occasional addition of breath.
Previously-bitter Bridges got the look in his eye that suggested he was proud of Nixon’s first words, and as his dusty eyebrows arched to prepare for the mistiness of his eyeballs, I looked away, not knowing what the fuck was going on and fully preparing to descend into madness. It was enough not to vomit, but walking was unthinkable. I came to an abrupt halt, and emotional Bridges continued walking until he noticed my disappearance and hurried back to check up on what I assume he had come to think was one of his own brood.
“What’s up, squirt?” He asked with the casual indifference of a father who picks his son up from soccer and asks about the surely-riveting game while examining the contours of every female ass in the emptying parking lot.
I looked up at him, and I would be a fool to say I knew what was up, but for a split-second I knew what was to be and I laughed. The laugh persisted, but the enlightenment did not, and as furiously-alive Nixon backtracked to see what was holding up the procession I was giggling furiously, not able to explain why I had stopped or what set my glee off. I only knew that he was near, and the momentum of years of consummation and hopes of escaping was finally shuttling into a point of absolution; the kind of finality that makes sense of zombie-Nixons and father Bridges, that takes back criticisms of Frost and understands the cultural significance of his verse, that refuses the pill and doesn’t look back. He still came.


Without the cool-bird-effect on his side anymore, Frost relied on a low-frequency moan and a steady trot to keep his lack-of-blood pumping for the carnage that lay ahead. He was ready in the same sense that all spartans are ready, a readiness you are bred to have and are made to unlock when the time is right. Frost was ready, and although he was unsure of what readiness meant or where he was, his feet did, and everyone’s feet agreed that’s all that really mattered.
It was only a few more minutes until his galloping brought him to find the mist curling around the shapes of three increasingly clear figures; what appeared to be a man confused between wanting to laugh and vomiting all over a heavily bearded second party that actually seemed to enjoy the dirtiness of it all, and what looked like a sour-faced politician decrying that he was above all of this nastiness and on the verge of sprinting straight into the woods.
Frost, however, didn’t give him enough time to consider bolting straightaway for Washington, and with the vivacity of a poet degrading for decades and not wholly sure of why he was about to attack three insane men, cried out. This cry sounded like a tree-branch snapping under the weight of a misplaced elephant, but did the job of turning the necks of the three, who were now only a few meters in front of Frost’s clutches.
Their eyes brought him rage, and rage brought him renewed clarity. All trappings of previous death dissolved like bitterness in the face of truth, and with the vigor of 30-year old Frost, once-Fetid Frost launched forward with the intent to restore his family name, not knowing that it was all going to be recorded anyway. Ignorance is bliss, however, and with the ignorance of someone sustaining themselves on poetry about mother nature, the most overrated force on Earth, Frost blissfully thrust out his claws and rammed into the vomiting fellow, who took it quite well, in that he fell to the floor and remained laughing.
Frost hadn’t really expected this, but he hadn’t expected anything that happened in the past few hours, and he really hadn’t expected the blood-clot in the first place, so his bewilderment was short-lived.
Bear-like Bridges, seeing the danger facing what he thought was his cubs, did what any bear wouldn’t actually do in this situation, turned in the direction of the conveniently placed woodland and dived headfirst to safety, a final, “It was nice knowing you, man,” whizzing by as he leaped.
Nixon hadn’t really been sure of what to make of the entire situation, but this last, abrupt withdrawal sucked all of the previously earned humanity out of him, and he shrunk back into decomposed-Nixon, who was unawares that he’d been lifted out of the trash-can he made his nest. This went unnoticed by Frost, who, with renewed vigor and thus, rejuvenated humanity, was looking at the vomiting man with misty eyes, lines of verse forming on the tip of his tongue like the purest of fruits.
All he could get out were the first few lines of Dancing Queen before the man got to his feet and tackled Frost. It was like something out of a western, minus the bar, the alcohol, the ass-less chaps, and sprinkled with the beautifully rendered embellishments of vomit-soaked clothing and occasional laughter.
Frost, spread-eagle and on his back, looked up in amazement into the face of a man who, with memories of a long-lost home and drug abuse shed, truly did not have the means to give more than enough fuck to ascend into enlightenment.
“You...you tackled me,” said Frost, uncharacteristically rudimentary.
“Well yeah, you looked like you were fighting between eating one of my limbs and roaring a sonnet. Seeing as though I didn’t really want either to happen, I tackled you. And honestly, I’ve wanted to say this to you for a while, but I hate your way with words. It’s like you don’t care about who gets to read what you write and you just fill the page with drivel that we could all out-do with a few walks along a forest-path and a medium-sized contentment with Nature. I needed to tell you that. I don’t know why, but I said it, and it’s true,” said the once-vomiting man, and after twitching with more words that were appealing but unnecessarily hurtful, he turned away from Frost’s newly crippled sense of self and followed the hurtling Bridges, his only remaining family.
Frost went on to become a successful barista at Starbucks, and Edelman would have felt it was a revenge well-deserved, but he was too busy yelling at his interior designer.

AP Physics B

Such and such, as we coalesce
Around the crutch, led to lunch
On rotten bits of captain crunch
And leftovers from some odd month
The stolid face maintains the blush
Rush, rush, express your heat
In terms of what went wrong
Defined by oblong contours of
Slander, he’d just as soon reprimand
Her, if it wasn’t for the disjointed banter
Allows him to canter from hope to dream
Stifled cream that ups the shame born
Of auburn locks and lovely shocks
Every range, pontificates upon the age
In dim rooms afoul with snaps, shunted
Respect defines the clap, that’s apt
To relax the muscle itching to shut trapped
The incense and intent of smoked, wet
Leaves and mile-high trees, the destiny
Of dust-free enemies allows the fee to
Pass from chakra to chi, feng shui, without delay
Rearrange the constancy at low pay
Careening from screening to screening
Just to gather petty meaning, and all
It does is loosen up the seaming, seeming
To be true, allayed the found fountain
Of you, expectancy bubbles into youth
Which shuttles into shame, blooms
Into the cover-up of stains, shoots into
Excuses for lost-time, and ends right here
In a grotto of shit-formed rhymes
Due time, due time

Dalmations

Everybody’s gotta learn sometime
That’s fine, I accept it, terms and conditions
But I’m finding it more and more difficult
To swallow the parameters of my position
When I’m left sallow, wishing
Got Beck breaking beats in the back
While I beckon spiritual ascension
Detention of mental frequencies
That we agreed was initially good for me
But it seems with each clenching and fission
Of spatial awareness and cognizance
Comes a relenting and derision of my
Original decision to maintain firm and fix shit
Continually doubting and hounding the man in the mirror
Not by error, but a misplaced sense of real worth
A surge of capacity for self-hatred that can only
Be placated by a certain conjunction of herbs
And honest words, miniscule blurbs that form the
Foundation of rational human stimulation and
Remind the humble that truth is youth, where
Innocence threatens to shoot, all that’s flaxen
Turns to soot, and bears the fruit as points grow moot
Everybody’s gotta learn sometime, the time is mine
And what started as formal articulation shifts to pantomime
Line after line is delivered out of time, misaligned
While I malign the four or five who kept trying to remind
That when most things are fair, the wicked remain blind
That kin transcends kind, with neurons to the grind
Sometimes it’s all we have to mind
And that’s all it ever is
Mind

On and on

Back and forth, unstructured form
Replay the storm that was borne out
Of our meeting, the feeling isn’t fleeting
Each discussion brings a mental sleeting
Sheeting of innocent layers, where the players
Can rest easily once more, without fear of being
Torn from divinity, within his eyes I see me, and
That’s all I’ll ever need, truly, it’s grueling
To remember that come next september
We’ll be members of a different scheme, not the
Kind to breed rivalry, but to stir up a distance
Of eyes to seek kinship again, the two birds are
Friends until the wire suspends, afraid of
Remembering me before he defined what
I could be, or will be if the plan doesn’t cease
But it will in all reality, the truth is always bleak
Are miles capable of separating our contingency
Of similarity, of clarity in chaos, what initially came off
As hatred brewed into common nature slammed into
A grouping of feelings that can’t be expressed in
Conventional terms, so I’ll say it again and again
Until it sinks in, burrowed deep like a spring-worm
When hearts are firm, and brows are set
I’ll never be too proud to admit
I can’t forget

ABBA, ABAB, ABBC? Fuck it.

Sputtering, stuttering, clustering
Must we sing, of demon’s pride
Increased divide, unspeakable king
Yearning for the truth inside

Four stings, for sung, forsooth we lie
A chide from god, and swallowed shame
Spirits to blame, baffled men who tower high
Power vied, claims denied, all blurred to stain

Coyne speaks of fairness, aborted rot
When all we sought was harmony
Army of blistered flow, where hope is pot
And cots upturned for wicked deeds

Unique cell, scientific prison
Wisdom felled for faith
Gates sundered in schisms
Prisms dissolved to sate

Hunger of the master
Alabaster imaging of forgotten lords
Discord stirred, strung up disaster
Aleister claims to hunt the hoard

While children weep, adults sin
Within the pride, up to the knee
In glee, of course, livers to gin
Virgins given to the lusty feast

And all that’s left is charred

The green book

And so it ends where all began
Thoughts once festive; sallow, wan
A bitter test of aptitude
As kings are brought to servitude

Saints and sinners, equal hands
The breadth of death’s reprimand
Dust carries the symbols, the chance allude
Now is withered, never new

A tale of consciousness, hints in spite
Mere flimsy hopes to survive despite
Demonic clutch, a soulful stew
Of flesh rent from full to few

Baphomet reigns with wit and guile
As virile soil is drenched in bile
Stanzas serve to disseminate truth
While infantile thoughts argue

Economy sunders in face of relation
Insectile beings herald the invasion
And all is suffered by the putrid pen
Cowering in dread in forgotten glens

Past rivalry makes way for apathetic acceptance
No turns are sojourned in attempts at repentance
The final stirrings, at last we view
Earth absolved of Adam’s brood

Maggot Zain

Why does he take everything he needs from me and tries to thieve
What cannot seem to fit the scheme of proper things, propped up
To think, but thoughts unlaid, careful plans are disarrayed in hopes
That truth will compound the nick in pride, the homicide of lusty rhymes
To turn the tide inside his eyes, two twins circle murderously blind
Regardless of the other’s true intent, the rules are set
Genetics meant to lock them in a box, no key, no sight
Passions alight, a civil struggle played out by friends who to
The end fail to admit the messages they intend to send
Pleasure with business, grit and gore, ask for substance, nothing more
Fully aware of the soul he tore, but wicked core allows him to ignore
Concussive consequences underplayed by discussing options
That we know will never ripen, I choose carefully my gripes and
Yet the hype of synergy lures me close, I beg the siren not to boast
The harpy laid her gnarled claw, withdrew my flaws and yet still saw
Evil within my charred with-all, without the stall to halt the maul
Unbelievably oppressed to the point of flinging hexes in tongues not spoken
By civilized men for millennium, expertise in empathy but the extent that he
Expects from me is nauseating to the point of agreeing with those who plead
To end, it seems a breeze at first glance, by chance the lance of emotion
Struck through gristle, bone, sinew, a new view of the man I thought I knew
All too soon the boon is bane, and once again I’m thrust into a state of constant
Complaints lodged in half-hearted attempts to restart the battle
Like a babe without a rattle, I purposelessly prattle on to an audience deafened
All the pithy forces continually combat the common-sense I know exists
But subconsciously resist for terms of cease-and-desist by the lump of neural matter
That truly matters in matters of temporally justifying my bladder of tolerance
And since I can’t tremble his skull or shake his words, my comments stream forth
Laconic, terse, no voice to bear the message, and worse
No courage left to face the hearse

Honestly

Periods punctuate the desolate isolation of my stimulation, meaning my main mode of expression is imparting depression on those who listen, and glisten with teary eyes as they hear me cry WHY from the periphery of cliff-sides, five times the gusto, indivisible stains, the only cripple to give up the struggle and drop his cane, 17 years of self-inflated pride and intervals of time when the crinkles and lines defined the other kind of feeling, whether he was stealing or dealing truth to the youth with the rotten sooth-sayer beckoning from beyond the grave, grim statements played on forgotten air-waves like the only function of government is to define the slave, or stave off the burden of the state, a hypocritical view of a hypocritical few whose only real use is to ship consumerism to you, or you, or third-world nations, who needs rations when you have action-figures, cheaply made AK-47’s, phantoms starving in the desert while weapons fall from heaven, kidney-shot at those who shoot for no other reason than impressed youth, driven from home their only sanctuary is the thought of an early tomb, a diatribe for the scattered tribes as if my high-handed lies could ease their lives, I glide from high to high only to discover that the substance wasn’t applied

Digg

Surprise surprise, her hips and thighs coincide with the wet sides of my lip lines
And in due time we’ll find the reasons why we need to lie in unison like dirt-drunk flies
For now, the pleasure isn’t yet pain, the hope remains and even though the rays
Of sun will make sure that all that’s left of the memory is a chalk-white stain
I know the stunning truth of bitter youth will permeate our brains and flood
What’s right and wrong, to write the songs of humanity, insanity at hand, he sees
His life flash before the lies, a cinema of everything skewed, coffee-grounds of hallowed
Ground brewed into visceral nonsense, and she vents into a damp pillow, as though
It’ll help to yelp all she needs to say today into an off-kilter, gray conglomeration of
Goose-feathers and civilized indignation, and stay hushed, let the charisma dwindle
Down to bare skin and plump ideas, I need the stimulation when the rations end
And programs bend to fit the presupposed lines I mend into factual bits of rational
Theories, like a shitty aphorism thrust from within a Beverly Cleary novel for teens
Cliches clash from scenes unseen by he who proclaims to know just what Beezus
Would do, well do you, I can’t say, when the match strikes the hay all that’s sacred
Blows away, Dustin Hoffman in the wind, graduate first, caffeine electrifying my skin
My lips pursed, and tense, terse statements uttered for the sake of being curt, unlike
Kurt, I feel the need to say what plagues my mind with as few sensible statements as
Possible, on top of it all, medicine on stilts bellowing anathemas at citizens of where-it’s-
Better who have just what I need, what they say will help, three acrimonious shots flung
Into our eyes though we tense up and freeze in hopes of warding off another threat to
Our innocence

Bethena

Enigmatic allegoric statements define how we react to rash actions
By those who take each pulse of the amygdala with a grain of rice
In order to better understand how to whip fear into the hearts of men and
Dominate in the field of emotion, furrowed brows and chapped knuckles
Loose bits of skin define the quirks within, the field of vision scanning who
Spoke the truth and who was just human, corporals of original sin
Paragon of who, what, where, when, but never why, analysis brings candor
Candor can’t do, for candor is truth, the bane of our existence
That man, that group, that lie, that truth, who are you with the ball and chain
Try to explain the reasons behind the hate, the blame, the shame, the programs
We justify with years of perpetually reciprocated pain, insane it seems to me
To be in this regime for untold ages, please do tell time for the masses
Flow of emotions halts to a witch’s brew like molasses, and the only question
I can think to ask is, is it static or enigmatic, did I introduce that repetition or did
It add itself, unsure of myself, shift from shelf to shelf under the umbrella of a
Remarkably self-imposed hell, 10 million stricken individuals with the disease of
Centuries coursing throughout their names like fallen manes the dribbled manna marks
The floor, forgotten stains from unknown times, doubting Zain with sub-par rhymes
Instant Karma, Lennon’s lies, the truth within Gopala’s eyes hides, and hides
And hides

Someone hold my hair back

Critically endemic shit I spit
Cranial split, concussion pit
Like intimate bits of the pills
Struggling not to excrete the swill
By will, original, full of new content
Continental tracheotomy like a bed of leaves
Crunchy to the nth degree, like you, me, and dupree
Was actually a good movie, verbal irony, you see?
Virility, sterility, virginity, fortune by the opportune
An awkward tune to stop the flow of mental runes
Archaic blooms and fields within his mind
He steals ideas from those who surround, they think
Efficient thoughts, he gleams at the chance to partake
Twenty-two, the natural, malamud, I caught him too
From glee to truth, not one in the same, forever inflamed
The force of friction, static diction, no more words to fuel
His addiction to progress, no chess queen, rook, shepherd or
Program, Black-briar to pretend I’m bourne again
Say when, say when, the needle pricks and thieves and thrives and
Needs, just as the bitter lips close in on trembling necks, chaotic veins
That preach, embalmed in four centuries of dissolute visions
Manifest fate for the manifest cut-rate prices to the pickers
Pickers think they’re winners, in actuality just keys on a board
Stored, locked, chained up in the prenup, civil suits, tort reform
Frivolous lawsuits to blind you from the suits making more than concerted efforts
To pluck and connive and derive equations that slowly drip your bank account
By what amount, to know all it takes is a base education but by the logic of Abraham
Kierkegaard, fear and trembling, perfectly rational individuals never educate themselves
Beyond the point of their government, for it makes too much sense
And I make none

Young-money democrat

Fair names for foul men
Bridged souls to the harness
So falls the hysterical pen
Twisted goals of twine and wine
Drunk from the whisper of fits
In due time the horror aligns
Maligns as it tumbles into the pit
Of bitter, inner, bit first, monster
Terror, rancor, anchor to mental disillusion
Solution is fusion of body and mind
Blind to the wisdom of elders, rejected for the
tenacity of the spirit to teach and quote and analyze
To decide, abbreviate the infinite, unabridged
Incipient madness, impossible to thrust into the box of
Society, simple enough to walk out, try to re-enter
Splinter in the aorta of the average, honest fool
But foolish men breed wizened heroes
Idols carved of knotted flesh
We bow, we dance, jingle, rot
Madness brewing broth
Portions proportioned to sections
Unmentioned, pieces of mental capacity
Misused for generation, generation, instigate the elimination
Of our pain, forgetfulness, regret the stamina of youth
Elusion included with the purchase of the man-sized
Harness, it harms us, no warning or punctuation
The situation is fitted in bouts of elation
Previous analysis and criticisms found to be false
Under the pretense of microscopic, eccentric, philosophic
Eyeglasses, know madness, know the man, the truth
The psyche, how beautifully rusty have we become
Speaks he who looks up from destitution
Belligerent itinerants, ignorant tourists
Pig-headed cinema quality ingested by youth
Claiming to see multi-dimensional creatures sluggishly
Chittering, crawling across their waistbands
A drop, a hint, an excuse for the mental dementia
Beg, beg, in unison they each drop to a knee
Two for valued measure, an honest mistake
Are we

Astral Protection

We’re all living to die while we die to live
Forgetting what actually is
We just wish for bliss
Dismissive of the evidence of substance
And the shit that amazed you at thirteen
Won’t phase you when you’ve been chewed up and steamed
And reamed, by the politics of indignation
In this nation, we’re rationed into stations based on the summation
Of our monetary level, on the curve or bevel of our income
In comes the shame, bucket in the well, It’s a wonder we didn’t run
Locked up, never free, never a mason
Presenting the citizens with a false image, a successful geisha
Various illicit substances to be ingesting
Digesting, professing that we need blessing
From a higher authority, more for me, it’s spiritual
Near the mental hull of pressed individuals
Psychological bite-sized chunks that I can chew
Made for you, specially wrapped, an astral carriage
A cosmic marriage, dare I say it, he wasn’t aware that
Creative output, not monetary value, should define a man
Blight of the land, a rap reprimand
Put into his mouth and regurgitated on worthy hands
Some make little sense while making minimal cents, they’re hopeless
We watch sunsets while refusing sweat, and incur scanty spiritual debt
You can bet that it’s a chill theology, honestly it could probably
Be considered a tad lazy, but that doesn’t phase me
Cause when you’re hazy, that’s when Krishna sings
Gopala Gopala, rhythmic value, little to none
Hope a lot, that the critical outlook will favor one
Demon rapper, from the look of things
More like the demon fapper
That’s a complimentary statement to honor my masturbation
I need a relatively similar sentiment just to keep serotonin levels in check
Otherwise I might transform into an emotional wreck
Over some shit that held no water
No fodder for the farm animal inside my cranium
Brain ego spreads out like a diagram of soapy fractals
Actual factual statements are shed in favor of rhythmic hymnals
It’s dim, but still, the word holds

Six degrees of being jaded

It's almost like we're all trapped inside a scorching building
The only constant in our lives is the hurt we're feeling
A consistent ache that breeds misdealing
Bitterness clouded by a haze, without revealing
The anguish and stains we hoped to keep in
A demonic seed that pulsates and masticates
Chewing on the twisted pride and settled fates
Blatant fervor for a cause that can't be erased
Convince us that there's really nothing wrong
It's an illusion, calculated mis-choosing, we've exaggerated all along
Say those words with meaning and bring the proof
Get embroiled in the problems and avoid being aloof
Like the other ones, the figures who said they'd always be there
Figures not realizing care is constant, brought up unaware
Of the struggle, of the ever-present issues, innumerable battles
Prattle and rattle ring the fruits of labor in toiled torsos
More so to aid ourselves than the corporate electorate, or so
We were led to believe, led by the sleeve, led down a path that only ended in deceit
Have to grieve when there's nothing left, when you're the only one standing, still have to detest
Fated to be depressed, check-less, without due rest we do less
And move less, fight less against being oppressed
Honestly I'm impressed, the struggle goes without saying
That an issue could be buried for years without mention
Without contention, without due process, we put patriots in detention
And meanwhile all the targeted are too brainwashed to pay attention

Rhyme Recession (The Demon Rapper of Sweet Street)

Analysis is proof of distance
And distance brings to mind repentance
Leastways that's how I see it
And check this, I’m a repository of shame
Meaning when my friends need to spit, I form an HOV lane
A speedy-line to expression
Please don’t flow into depression
Do we need the bottles of potion
Or do we really just need some honest discussion
Age of cicadas, age of insects, age of lustful sex
Age of pride in the un-earned, misused, and empty checks
It’s a bad case of too much faith in the middle-man
His influence spans rivers too wide to understand
The image he spun’s a minor chink in the grander plan
We live off the fat of the land, off the scams of the hand
Corporate end-all, it’s the neural menthol
Your goals are unspecific, your ambition, less than prolific
Life isn’t a picnic and you’d rather be blunted during it
Phobia of the grave, call it fear of the inevitable
It’s common sense and all to fear becoming a vegetable
But death is natural, no sense in trying to stress your own
Some make stress their only post to hold
Use chemical medleys to glide through life calmly
Spend days in a haze just to magic marker the pain again
We kill each other just to stay alive
Don’t keep in mind that symmetry was designed to maintain the line
In due time, realize the dichotomy’s for the blind
But that’s us, sheep without a clue, or with an excess
So which one are you? The sightless or hopeless?
The less-blessed or the fortunate
Fortunate that either choice ends the same
The finger points inward because there’s no one left to blame
Maturity breeds responsibility breeds a response to weed
A response to the THC that blinds me from stressing
The mess that is society, so when you see me with my eyes red
Don’t count on the words that I’ve said, or the flags for which I’ve bled
It’s enough to keep your head, almost certain that I’m not dead yet
Or met my end, shit, I guess I really can’t be too sure
Spiritually too poor to put forth conjecture on life’s deeper dreaming
Eastern religions have me scheming to get buddha beaming
But when the long-hand drops, all absolutes lose their meaning
Feel me?

Wheel

The price to pay
For the sins of today
Another laid-back hell
A trip down the well of shame
A lennon lesson and I just can’t let it be
Languid preachers and creatures deem the feature
Misplaced needles will swindle you to beat her
And I’d find it fine
If it’d deign some peace of mind
But I still haven’t found it, even after all this time
In the bongs and bottles of beer
Through the shame and leavened tears
I’d like to say I’ve been wizened by the years
Instead I’m crushed up, rourked down
A wrestler without the scars
I’d fly far but I’m bogged down by emotional tar
Triceratops of fate, what’s the message of today?
The price you chose to pay
Came two minutes too late
Honestly it’s dizzying
That a simple thing
Will throw you in the ringer
Just like sandler in the singer
We’re all looking for a drew
And if you stroke my ego right
I’ll give the prize to you
But in the dead of night
Brain bloated full of blight
Ask yourself, was it worth it?
To give your freedom up as profit?
To be a prophet for the market?
Mark my words, don’t consider to attempt it
Unless you have a propensity for harboring contempt
Qualitatively, I’ll put it simply, I’m done
Quantitatively, I’m solo, just one
Been taking hits to up my productivity
To be honest, it’s only deepened my declivity
Tried to open my lips to halt the span of brevity
Rejected constantly, confidence from head to knee
Before I knew it, I was smoking trees just to flee the scene
Punched back for the very first time
Spit out a rhyme to decide my worth
And what’s worse is I didn’t even dent the purse
Didn’t shake the bank
Or even shake the lake of stability
Couldn’t change a thing when the world needed me
Consequentially, I’m the only one paying the fee
Bob barker on the throne and I’m stumbling downwards
A nightmare in dream’s clothes, thought I finally found her
Phoenix in the stomach, purity in the core
Come Zain, come join us, come claim your reward
It’s twisted, I mixed it, the mental chex-mix of hooligans
A street-sent mendicant, here to serve a purpose
Like marina to a porpoise, but I’m vehement, nickatina
I’m bleeding for you, seen ‘em?
The machine’s wound up for personal use
Your turn to choose, bent-up or abstruse
In fact I’ll lend you the noose
Just off yourself, flora, we’ll use your neurons as juice

Uninspired

My main struggle at the moment is the urge to vomit
That the water in the bottle is caustic poison
Or that I’m surrounded by more plastic than Wallace and Gromit
Maybe it’s that my cerebral cortex is poised in
A position that promotes mental dereliction
My cerebellum is stuck in stick-shift
I missed it, tried to fix it, rhymed it
With it, and forgot that doesn’t constitute wit
And all around the world it’s the same song
So I guess you should comprehend why I hit this bong
Like it’s an unwanted child, why I pull an Oscar Wilde
Gazing at the stars from a gutter of my filth
The proximity to marijuana seeds had me feeling
Like there wasn’t more to life than inhaling green
Every breath I took, came with a sting
Turn the radio on, hear the police
Not the kind to make a THC blood-stream freeze
But the ones to put a clouded mind at ease
The fridge brilliance portrays an Oliver Twist
Begging me, can I have another
And hey man, you kinda look like your brother
But If everyone in the world is a brother, then see
There’s plenty of fish in the sea that look a lot like me
Wouldn’t be a moral dilemma if I wasn’t a fiend
Soul of Fidel-sized revolutionaries at the age of seventeen
Some people dream and scheme to sit up on the block and lean
That’s not for me, I’m feeling grander
Haven’t mentally shampooed for days, I’m feeling dander
And I’m not Drake, won’t read off of a blackberry
Only reason is because my Mac’s too large to carry
Brush the dust off, I’m back on the saddle
But I’m still hiding in my shell in fear of battle
Liver’s poisoned from a bath-tub of cheap swill
Realistically, at the moment, I’m dazed
There’s a plume of smoke, and my mental crops are razed
Metaphorical way to say he got blazed
I’ll keep the tongue stoic, the verbal blade staid
This life was made for me, I have it extremely well
I live comfortably, without intent to sell
So why make poetry, without the inner demons
Because the skeleton’s there, result of cursed semen
Anger in suburbia, label me vehement
Not at opportunities lost, they’re all around me
But because some don’t respect the chillosophy
Disappointment like a plate of wet bologna
Curtains close and the dream fades slowly

Collegeboard

I have this disorder called empathy
At least recently that’s what it’s appeared to be
To me, and to others, a caustic disease
A personality sickness that has me on my knees
All the shame without the buzz
Less attractive than a jar of navel fuzz
Bitterness melts away because
I’m bumping to slug, god loves ugly
Well if there is one, he must not know me
The stinginess comes through in my lyricality
That’s not even a word, evidence of my apathetic mentality
And no, I haven’t been to battles, see
I’m what the dogs bark at, call me a pussy
I’d rather sit here and spit than start shit with nitwits
But maybe that’s because there are no nitwits to start with
Not necessarily that I’m alone, but the population of supporters has been hard-hit
Spent more time gazing at tits than making dreams come to fruition
If the streets are covered in sperm, call this the road to omission
Is that a biblical vision?
No, it’s just fiction
Surrounded by juice, call me the peach pit
But wait shit, I’m just a chubby white kid
In fact, I need to adjust my damaged eyelids
Or at least where my gaze sits
Because my dreams and the reality honestly don’t fit
And that’s the hardship I have to deal with
Not starving in the projects or in the barrio selling bean-dip
The gravity strikes the back of your throat just like cool-whip
Consider that the last of my food quips
At least in this post, too many consonants
If the world is Isengard, I’m an invading Ent
Or Treant, miscreant, feel free to express
Digress, whatever makes you feel less hopeless
Some spend checks on over-priced clothes to dress
Up their fears, at the bottom of the beer
Swallow the dregs just to make sure you don’t see clearly
With clarity comes reality, and with the truth comes brevity
With abruptness comes readiness to blow your brains into the carpet
This life, I tried to harm it, more hollow in the chest than Kermit
I’m just a puppet, I’ve had enough bliss
I’d offer you my ass, but there’s already a hand implanted

When you put it like that, sure.

After a while, the boogeyman disappears
Leans over and whispers crookedly in your ear
I’ll be back in a couple of years
An amalgamation of all your financial fears
It’ll make you realize that even though you don’t check under the bed
You’ll still feel the urge to put a bullet in your head
Well isn’t that a kick, ruminate like Dean Martin
Peering over the edge, finally starting
To realize the benefit of being passionate
Went from stashing dreams to stashing shit
When the brownies finally dissolve, you begin to believe
Sometimes, all we need is the drugs in the sleeve
Or to grin without teeth, emotion without the meat
Label it revenge, call it karma, what have you
But before you lay down judgement understand what I’d do
To repent, to bring an end to the shame
Maybe that’s my motive behind playing these games
Or maybe it’s because to me they’re mental foreplay
Pixelated stimulation of the day
Blurring the lines, it’s the creative incarnation of the color gray
Rhymed gray with day, I couldn’t pass K-12 another way
So I’m here to stay, atop a cacophonous suburban symphony
Symphony pronounced “ay”, but only to fit my rhyme scheme, okay?
Without further delay, examining social interaction
It’s funny how we feel the compulsion to split into factions
Or the urge to scrutinize where the innocence went
Call it introspective ignorance, or hyper-self-conscious bliss
But I don’t have a magnanimous sense of when to spit
No internal alarm telling me the path is writ
I guess it isn’t, is it?

Call me Ken. Or Ben. Actually, just call me Zain.

I'm rounding up, just call this the bell-curve
Get slapped back just to make sure you struck a nerve
The issue's a squirrel in the road, make sure to swerve
When really, you just need a chance to escape her
He's saying "ya just expand that universe"
My thoughts are terse and I need to lyrically doodle first
That's all that this is, it's merely practice
You can call me M.O.S. if the shoe fits
Or rather I guess if the gold-tooth fits
Can't make rap a career so I'll just use this
To boost the linguistic, call us stylistic
Misfits, square pegs in a round world
Let loose a thread and the whole system comes unfurled
But that's not to say that I've lived on the streets
Upper middle-class and my upbringing was meek
Never seen gang-violence, and I won't fake it
Hear that auto-tuned liar and I just can't take it
Won't show up to jams, and my theory is he's frightened
Scared at the chance that he might end
Up realizing he's white-trash, he's the rash
That as creators we have to face
Need to burn the M.O.S's, the Fonzworths, and the fakes
And that's not a formality, I mean literally sear them
We can be the street-poets on a mountain of roasted men
Picture this, all it takes is a passionate pen

I'll have the enema!

Now it’s personal

My mental purse is full

And I’m cursing at the thought

Of being left behind with my head

Firmly implanted in the sand

I’ll dodge the reprimand and strike back with a gilded hand

Not like the gilded age, this situation is real

It wasn’t written for stage-play

New impulses I feel

It’s like a reel of the past 10 years

It isn’t deceased, the tiger’s still there

I didn’t lay it bare, I wasn’t aware

It was needed, until about an hour ago

The show was over and the curtain finally closed

It was funny, because when I was actually alone

The introspection made me feel horrendously exposed

So I dug in the shell, ripped the turtle’s head out

Again I remember what this soulful shit was about

This time around he’s not going back in

Finally understand that would be borderline sin

Can’t be blind to the blunt aspiration

Not blunt inspiration, not taking hits to stay mentally fit

Clawed out of the pit, and it’d take at least twenty men to get me back in

That’s all I have to say about the matter

And don’t fret, I won’t pull a Marshall Mathers

Won’t blab about being back until your head hurts

To anyone that stayed loyal to me

Welcome back to Multicultural Colonoscopy

This one's for you

You are a triumph of natural selection. Beyond the petty nonsense, the neoclassical ranting, the existentialist, hopeless, histrionic moaning, you are composed of millions of molecules that have spent eons waging mankind’s most magnificent war: the fight to adapt. Soul or not, heart or shame, we are fighters. The only humans who will ever concede or wail into a cobbled corner have been conditioned to give up, and in releasing that last, shimmering glimmer of opportunity, they have become empty casks. A man without fight, timbre, or to put it simply, spirit, has sold their humanity for temporary protection from a government stationed around a hub of profit and seedy misconduct.

You have been staring down death since day one. It’s undeniable. You could’ve been strangled at birth, victim to an unruly umbilical cord. You could’ve died in the crib. You could’ve been hit by an innumerable amount of bullshit, the kind of nonsense that anyone can be whipped by at any given moment. You could’ve, but you didn’t. And just that phrase, that simple act of surviving in a world that is fueled by the dust of deceased game, makes you better. You are the cutting edge.

Your story has been one of bloodshed and depression, but you made it. From the times before recorded history, to the first agricultural settlements, spanning from the inner-Tigris, to the Nile, to North America, you have found the tools to survive, and clutching them against the very Nature that takes and gives life at any uncaring whim, you stand victorious. Don’t ever sell yourself short, for you are descendant of the civilizations that brought fire to the canals of tyranny, that banished incubus and succubi and instead placed reason and science as the cornerstone of sophistication, and who cleaved the heads of those who would dare concede, who hanged the unruly, and who enjoyed the spoils of humanity; of living. You are the branch of a tree whose roots go back to Byzantium, Rome, Carthage, and the beginnings of Democracy. You are man.

Cassius Clay

Dance around the question like Muhammad Ali

Eyes bathed in red like I worship chlorine

Hurtling down from space, off a gram of that green

Off the edge, shows a man what lost hope really means

He deigns it deemed

Can’t understand my perspective

Just call me HAL

And I’ll skew the directive

Protective?

Yes, he blessed it

A prophet to the people but he

Forgot the message

Stonehenge in the suburbs

Form a line

You’ll find that their kind

Will do anything for a dime

Plummeting forward at 2 am

I’m stuck without an intro, where to begin

I’d like to say I’m in the studio slayin’

But I’m not Gohan, that’s not what I’m sayin’

Invectives infest my brain, prime objective to derange him

Well, it’s working, that I can confirm

Empty phone at my side, I’m in a puddle of my sperm

This isn’t PBS, there were no lessons learned

No educational prime-rib for the pulsing neurons

R-Complex is the main culprit of what went wrong

The dendrites don’t spark right and tonight

I just might end it, on second thought

I might just recharge

Don’t be alarmed at this sudden change of heart

The need to restart

I’m begging for a clean start

A wiped slate, a new beginning

I’m way past my game, call this the 23rd inning

Fruit in the tree, so I’m stuck her sinning

Like a prostitute tailor, you were fucked in the fitting

I’m a rotten peach, in the field, I was plucked for the pitting

And winning

Is nothing more to me

It’s getting easy to see

I just want to be

The ballad of semi-serious sammy

These fuckin’ walls must be talking cause I can hear em

Got me thinking for a second I’m sobbing too close near em

Stole that line from Eminem, but fuck it, I’m done

My lips are sealed and my hand’s shaking with the gun

And that’s proverbial anyway, I can’t even afford one

Can’t choke down the pill bottle, too oblong

If at all possible, I won’t be here for too long

Gambino in the back, sketching my spirit

Envisioning brains on the walls, last chance to spit it

Let me list off the things that led to this

A lack of women, a lack of friendship, and a general lack of tits

But that’s sort’ve a joke, I haven’t gotten a poke

In a while, but it’s not my style to grieve over a woman

Pouring my soul out for basic fulfillment

No tears for the stone-faced harpies that don’t care

Ambulance siren and they aren’t there

Only need you when the time is right

No, not now, you just won’t suffice

You’ve got your hand in my heart and you pluck out my soul first

Fake gun trembling, aimed between my shoulders

This isn’t a cop, this time I’m not clownin’

My sense of self-esteem is an orphan, and it’s lost drownin’

Abandoned in the sewer, it’s where we found him

Well damn, it’s like nothing was ever achieved

If I could believe, then I wouldn’t need this bottle of dusty aleve

Last thing to say is fuck it, brush it off, remember they need you

Idiocy 202

Right about now, I feel more useless than BP. That’s an honest statement. I can’t recall something productive that I’ve done in the past month. It makes me wonder if adult-onset dyslexia is actually possible, or if my brain is being infested with THC. That’s the active chemical in marijuana plants, but you probably knew that. In fact, you probably smoke all the time. Get a hold on your life. I’m projecting my insecurities on you, because it’s more simple that way. You can be my tabula rasa. I’m hoping to whatever malicious deity is out there that this is just a phase, that one day I’ll feel like me again, that maybe the self-righteous tragedy will end. The shitty flow, whatever remnant of rhythmic ability I once had, I just want it back. I want to turn back the clock about 16 years and be fully cognizant. I would definitely live my life again just to tweak a few things. And it trails on and on.

Grieve

There’s nothing like a contradiction

Damn, these misfortunes got me feeling like I’m in a fiction

Unusual friends, speaking with odd diction

Tension in the wires, relationship friction

Mental dereliction, it’s got me chilled to the sleeve

The guy you used to know popped a bottle of Aleve

Old family and friends, you’re watching them leave

But in your heart you know it’s false, you just can’t believe

I’m wasting money on street philosophy

I bought it for them, bought it for you, never for me

They can’t see, the actions I do, the pleas

I’ll shred the hate to pieces, can anyone agree?

Got a brother on the bench, hands and knees

Beltin’ out his last meal, we don’t hear him breathe

Mind wrecked by the blind stress, attic decked

With the cold sweat, damn, he was one of those friends

The kind you could depend, the kind that you could lend

He’s dead in a gutter now, his once strong brow broken down

He was a fool, he was a clown, but we loved him man, no doubt

Eyeless, once grit, hubris, he knew this

Would happen, couldn’t stop fate from clappin’

Inspired by the street scholars, spent all his dollars

On those neat collars, threw the cash but he won’t learn

I see it now in the broke brains, it’s the cocaine, no names

Kids on the corner want that thug fame, unfortunately those dreams are too tame

No need to play the blame game, when you eat after rats you leave no shame

The structure of the whole thing has got my eyes red, my friend’s dead and my words said

A life of destruction, pity, death he led

And now the damn fool’s playing chess with the devil

Bright man, young man, I knew you first

Before they pulled you out the hearse, I watched you, face terse

I didn’t act, that’s what worse

Watched you snatch a purse

Brother you’ve got me on my knees

Begging god please

But he just lets me grieve

I can't think of a title that doesn't have the word damn in it. See?

No king without a throne

I knew it wasn’t meant to be

Alabaster, tarnished bastard

I fucking hate you and you know it

It’s in my eyes, rage, madness

Vitriol, I bite down hard, clamp

So you can’t take it away again

Goddamnit I thought you were golden

My god, my father

What the fuck have you done?

You monster, my monster

Your blood is in my veins

I want to rip it out with my teeth

I want to blind myself to never see that smile again

Poison mouth

Poison man

Green eyes, blue eyes, whatever the hell you are

Demon, I see you

Christ can’t tell what I would do to you

If you ever did it again

I swear to god I’d kill you

4x4

Bars, charts sittin’ torn

Knock down your veins like Haiti

In a storm

Future twisted like a joint of dissolution

Can’t feel the syringe so you

Diss my solution

Fusion of lucid musings

Not an illusion of what we’re really doing

Feel the box, six by four around your head

Even more terrifying when you know you’re not dead

Buried alive but still bumping to your favorite tune

Dug up by criminal minds with eyes

Like a fish-tailed moon

And goons, you see, don’t really mean

To be

But thievery and chivalry go hand in hand

With what we hope to achieve, necessary evil

Extreme ways, moby in your headphones for those

Up-turned days

Shaved agenda, trimmed budget

Just lost your part-time, tried not to fudge it

Fuck it

We lost it, it’s hostile

Mobile mental patterns seek to roast

Guile

It’s almost infantile

Do you dig what they bring to the table

Fables crafted out of known rambling

Shambling down the avenue

Split between what you mean and what

You actually do

So chew it over with some humility

Ability to discern the pattern of gregarity

Clarity, grab a bag of chronic seeds

So you can start a garden free of

Pesticide, nutrition for the growing mind

Burned out bums dish broken time

Shattered brains and hypnotized rhymes

Bootleg handed down by generation

Distilled to ferment your indignation

Sublime, really, I love it when the filthy

Situation fits what I design or decree

Stopped at the park

Yes, this shit belongs to me

You see, me and this feces make

A happy family

Just the bacteria and I

It’s not the hand

But how it’s played

Shoot up a walgreens

Cause you haven’t gotten laid

Raid on the mind, like a solvent

To roaches, approach this medium

Of tedious delirious youth

Madbliss

Fucked around with too many mental crystals

Missiles of a high volume that consume optimism

And the feel-good know nothings of a street philosopher

That is all we are, microbes on a layer of shit, feces known

As home, still the everlasting home for our bones and dust

We are the life-powder for future generations, the potential lies

Within each of our hearts and minds, a steady combination of

Fruitful discussion and madness, Dylan theatre of knocking and

Raving, oh the times, yes they are a changing, feet clanging

On grates of conglomerated hate, minute hand is a poison

lol-tacular

Pound for pound, the tears of a clown

Fool performs when nobody’s around

No sound except the silence

The threat of violence

Blind from the poison so he borrows my lens

Pretense of excellence

Poised sequence of chex mixed mental fits

Decked in his battle-gear

Can’t scare adults, so he strikes fear

In the hearts of children, midland

Little tykes in toy-land

Hasn’t felt a female touch since ninety-three

Hasn’t shaved since the war, hasn’t bathed in

I can’t remember, was it mid-september?

Some time that he melted in an ether blender

It’s rendered, mentally unstable, flip the table of

Able doctrines, mistfits to my fix, all quiet on

The frontal lobe, burned out and it’s all gone

Insect chitters in the skull, mentally null, abstractly

Dead in a cask of fear and humility, if only the audience

Could really see, beyond the make-up of the clown

A tortured me

Free? Never.

Freedom is an ironic thirst to slake

Break, snake my way out of these chains

Take the blame for the stain inflicted on the

Generation of liars, crackheads, tweakers

Sneakers, more important than your teachers

Features a misplaced greed, never been weaker

Morality, untuned radio, mental waves of fortitude

Attitude of empty suits, blank hands, face value

Zero cents in the bank account of metaphors

Bitter rhymes in times of frozen dereliction

Picture the mixture of misogynistic misters

Denouncing, pouncing, on darker berries mounting

Frowning, clown sings, hands unchained but heart

Bleeds for the youth in the favelas, don’t know better than

To shoot, no use to fight the past, tradition is a pistol

Whose bullet shoots to last, crass criticisms of art

Delivered fast, what makes a painting but emotional motes

Of trash, pain, abstract names in sundered plains

Buffalo knocked down dead, no one to blame

But the force that pushes, chooses to muse us, turn your fellow man

To a speck of dust, pale blue dot, earth shivers itself

It knows that the most marvelous, golden idol is just an inch away

From uselessness, fruitful bliss, ignorant to the solvent bit

Of truth, impossible to see

The bitter clown with shattered dreams is really

Truly free

Shame

I wondered briefly

Chiefly concerning

Discerning madness

Classless vagrants

Paid rent, but grim times

Late fines and cheap words

Herds of mismanaged men

When what’s left is less

Best to leave it to those

Pose a question of integrity

Economy is withering, but the suits

Loot the bank, stark fear, fervor

Curbs stained with the pain

Blame it on the parents, not the teacher

Feature headline, two dead after mis-fire

Liars walk the street, plague of insanity

Humanity, cradled, coddled by mis-truth

Ruthless, fearless, bloodshot toddler

Took her by the throat, no one answered

Transferred to an empty room, light switch

Itch in her brain, tumors the only thing growing

Row in her school, kids watch like it's normal

Formal to beat your neighbors face in

Face it, we’re done as a race and

Our last prayer answered

Cancer to end a global mind-set of hate

Fate to fit the shame, let it rot

Pot to fill his feeble mind with hope

Rope, to end the self-esteem

Steam stays bubbled

Rubble, once an infant

Mint condition, provision, varnished

Tarnished by diffidence, apathy

As we see, justly musty, sorrow

Borrowed time, leased alacrity

Mentally stitched to help swallow

Follow your doctor's orders

Borders set to limit your spastic

Elastic emotions, reaching the end of clarity

It's fairly cheap to fill the bottle

Mottled kids, too young to spell their name

Change into monsters capable of swiping

Ripened to rape and destroy

Toy with the fabric of a quilt

Built to represent our deepest shit

Spit of politicians

Muffled

To him that bubbles

Virulent mass of flesh and

Bone, tearing segment piece by

Ligament and water-mark

Print, saddled in the ferocity

Of mice and marred dreams

Scuttling horrors that knock on

Wishes and realizations

Truth is an ether that muffles

Confused are we the addicts

Fiends of forgotten realms

Acrimonious, can’t sensationalize

The senseless masses are flooding

Forth, inundate the brain that spawned a

Cycle of tyranny and madness, the steadfast

Of champions, broken limbs, charred remains

Heroes down-trodden, trodden, fallen?

Rise up, the phoenix says to wizened corpse

But corpse denies instead it digs

Further down, vermiculation

Facsimile forms of indignation

Stumbling into caverns, hilly patches

Tender lies that feed the youth

Fulfilled

Infected Mushroom

The gnomenclature

Features nature

Sickness bred in fright

Infected shrooms

A cruel volume

Of zombies near

In sight

A class of points

And prongs, too few

Take a chunk

Split a piece

Disease is scored

By vomit spewed

Vision melts

With infant beards

And cookie farms

In candy-fields

The gum-drop crop

Displayed in hay

Horses splayed

Organs blotched

Strewn in the shade

Gnomish princes

Wince in fits of

Absolution, power lost

To distribution

Bacteria starts

The circle flows

Germs begin

Gnomes will grow

What starts in slime

Soon ends in foam

And so the mushroom

Crumbled top

Victim to spells

And putrid rot

Sophistication

Burned on sight

To be a gnome

Is to end in blight

Dest

I’ve seen their kind before, and to the best of my knowledge I’ve seen your kind before. It seems like that’s my career now, seeing. Seeing when sight is a privilege, eyes when I wished them away. I saw the tense ones, the calm ones. Stoic men and hearts staid by meditation. I watched them pass by and return, the crack-heads and pill-poppers, base-heads and shoplifters. The ones with faces that shrieked their misfortune, sins etched permanently into grooves of waxy skin. Through pupils pale green, bitter cold like an arctic slap, nerves severed two inches too early. The heroes, the destitute. All different, yet all seen, all same.

Bible dust

In grooved halls and chambers gleaming

We presided over the dust of times

Individual slices, a zephyr of energy, split by nose

Bushy beard and cob-webbed hair, yet kingly, royal crown of light

Bent down to feel the weight of children

The burden of knowing nothing is impossible

Our lord took his first line, stood in line, snapped

Clapped Lucifer, brothers as always, brothers of the chain

My man, exclamation, my man my nose-hairs

My burning, singed, mounds of dried

Petrified wood, mind, a steel-trap

Don’t mind the lord he’ll go around our ignorance

They say if Jesus came back today he’d throw up

If the lord returned, a change of robes would be in due

Collect-calls to organizations, let’s get some agendas straight

Nostrils caked with the juice of lovers, the juice of speed

21st century ambrosia, the finest of the fine

Ground between the breasts of thirty-three Colombian virgins

And poured directly into the nose of the lord himself

Angel’s dust

Membranes pulsate, undulate, languid lemurs leaping

Profess the lord profess

Oh lord, the king of foreign cabins, good-will servant

The bread of all the Earth weighs not the poundage of your speech

All the words, the possibility

Aeons of memory and infinite knowledge, the labor and reward

Served only to a God

Capable of saying anything

And he asked for seconds

Even the lord can appreciate cocaine

Dreaming

Whether we weather the storm

Or conform to the norm

It’s uniform

The decisions and provisions

They feed the hunger strikes

And visions of the weaker men

Die in the cradle, choked and when

A spirit falls, wings break too

Tied to down to earth by problem glue

Icarus, he knew it too

When dreams fly too high they crash and burn

But without dreams how can we learn?

To imagine is to love in thinking

That life is not just endless sinking

Hope transcends the prison walls

Mistakes made early, choices, falls

Dreams outweigh deepest sin

Portray the grace that lies within

The souls of men, weak and weary

Without dreams are rendered bleary

Life and death, two terms, too vague

In lying helpless can’t relate

The struggle of wings to escape time

In spacial terms, of rap and rhyme

The words provide the means to see

In dreaming we are truly free

the well

I see it now in their dead eyes. In the prying of cold, hard fingers. Disillusionment sits on the throne and we bow down weekly. I knew a musician who tried to escape it. Science, reason, and progress he trumpeted every evening over cigars and glass upon glass of fetid wine. Yes, his notes would travel and move our souls, but it was the movement of a corpse in a river. We were impassive. Our greater senses lifted high into the sky but we were oblivious to the pleasure. Damn the fools that kept their spirits. Damn the well.

Monster

I tensed. Frantic men looked around at other frantic men and we all exhaled a collective breath of relief. It was over, but only later did I realize I left something behind in the war. It was over, but so was I. It was the first few shots that changed most of us. You could see it in our eyes as we struck down men. Wide eyes, dumbstruck faces. We had the expressions of torn souls, ripped between the love of our country and the hate of our leaders. I wished so many times I had ran away with Stagnowski. The field marshal brought back his body days later, bitten by wolves and bloated rats, but at least he died a human. We will die as monsters.

Masks

I thought I saw the sun today

But it couldn’t have been, the sun went away

The light died as the body-bags filled

God ran away as the blood of youth spilled

Eager to pull the trigger, they didn’t figure

That with each cut to the skin of a child

Humanity’s armor was chinked

Severely, it appears that wearily

We divine the process but it’s too heavy

To understand, liters of blood stain the white sand

Figurative streets without mark or name

Bono tries to save but it’s all in vain

Open the window to the sight of children slain

I just hope they wake up where the souls have no stains

Criminal acts, disease marks the murder

Crimes so harsh they don’t have a word for

What was done, ribs showing, innocence dead and gone

It’s bitter, brutal, grim how we see the world

But what’s worse is society deserves its reputation

Fit for degradation, it suits the situation

Allegations of stimulation, fallacies of truth, it’s makeshift

Left with a stub of humiliation, indignation at your cosmic placement

It’s over, the leaves have fallen, songs are written

Go back home, but your old life isn’t fittin’

Butter on too much bread, hope it doesn’t last

Can’t go through life wearing a gilded mask

Soul

Why is the voice of the youth dead

Broken, once jovial

It lingers on blasphemy

A shadow draped on magnificence

Translucent, redolent of death

Her wailing echoes and I feel the madness

It edges forth, it writhes in front of me

A burlesque of lunacy

Why do the chords of madness quake

The trembling unceasing

Tones, hollow, her soul shudders

I can hear her dying

Fluttering towards the cliff of insanity

In the white-washed rooms of early graves

Of infants felled by mental rot

Hers is the lost generation

And just as the arms and legs of countrymen

Amputated to feed a machination of war

Her heart is detached, no feeling, numb to the finer things

Hers are the blunt nuances, the faint turn of phrase

That makes one wonder, is our purpose to toil

I cleaved and cleaved into her

A breathless sigh of sinew

And I found no soul

No word or clue

LCD

Light beams of horror reign supreme

They deign it deemed, it means to scheme

And we believe it so, without divine knowledge

Yet we claim we know, brows furrowed

To the chained ego, profess a hypnotic

Solution to disillusion, column of profusion

World of confusion, ball of translucence

Corruption meant to hide but it’s revealed to amuse him

Paper and pen in hand to uncover the truth

Vistas of lies, bile rots the fresh tooth

Immediately, media free, Collegiate search

Of what went wrong, three hours into the program

Two shots in the dark, expectations damned

A dosage of prozac to stimulate your mind

A hit of mary-jane to help you unwind

Addiction to the drugs that twist and bind

Is really dependance on the system that finds

Weakness in the hearts of men, choke-hold

On your family and friends, insurance for the worst

When we lost all hope and expectations are terse

Realistic, the voodoo of LCD, plugged in

Blind to reality, You don’t need your family

You just need the latest DVD, but see

That isn’t me, I can’t hold up to that standard

It only takes one, a chink in the armor

One murmur, one last word

Archaic

I’m muddled. The final bastion is broken. Even then it’s not poetic. No soliloquy to lay me down. No maiden to brush my hair and apply scents. I’m alone with the candles. Ashen wicks on pale towers of phosphorescence. I am the tower, the last barrier. The divots and rivulets reflect madness. Brewed by primitive cravings, the lunacy lingered and clutched tight, a desperate beast of knowledge. Hollow thoughts in a bruised mind. For weeks the only sound is the scratching and skittering of rats. This, and the shrieks. But they are my own screams, not of terror but of lack of company. A scream is a rock thrown to test company. A bellow proves just how alone one truly is. Who am I fucking kidding, though? This act, this charade of sophistication. Vigils held at moonlight only serve to show my arrogance. Fuck parchment.