You are what you say; I am nothing

Now is the thrust of my disquiet
Made unceasing bitterness by bouts with nausea
and epileptic prophet-hood;
When, knowingly, lightheaded faith
Turns as the cold warrior turns
Conceding partly through half mentioned conceits
and the unbending will of a mental canker
Hushed I remain - lips sealed thinly
Intimations of perverse disillusionment
revealed as such: immense silence
Grim-visaged man footing the brink
alternating between various inactions
and various levels of stoicism
I sometimes feel as if the message
that will be my remembrance -what endures
when flesh does not and what inspires
when truth cannot - will be my most innocuous words
My most unfulfilled sentiments
And my most blatant misgivings

I can never be more than what I have become

Tell me what I need to do to become independent-minded

Obama isn't Malcolm X
Martin Luther King Jr, Jack Kennedy
or Lyndon B. Johnson
Obama is a jovial Israelite
Bill Cosby, Ice Cube
even Morgan Freeman

He's a bitter salve
Served in a flashy Happy Meal
The first Lord Regent weaned on Sesame Street
Who learned to swindle with the finesse
of insidious Ad Men

While Paul pulls punches from a place
of pure politicking - its original intention:
To convey policy, to opine openly
Some shrug indifferently
Others make a sour face
2011 wasn't Creme de menthe
2012 won't be a balm for chapped innards

The jig is up
Our number's been called
Advance in line, Knight to C7
Trip sullenly on your shoelace
Tug morosely on the sinew
Of the Last Empire

What If We Could

'It's only a matter of time,'
You said casually with the grace
Of someone who doesn't beg for listeners
Or begging for listeners, yearns quietly
With the practiced ease of a fierce conversationalist
Knowing your audience, fluttering eyelids
Smirking wryly, precisely
You brought up the tropes of my character
Fun-sized chunks of my personality:
Things I prefer - you proffer knowingly
And gauging the halting skid of my pupils
As they race and dance in the heat of relation
You apply just enough pressure
on bruised skin, to feel a surge of life again
And for people of my brood - Brothers in arms,
men/women/gender dissociates - That surge
becomes a hobby, rehearsed silently and meted out
In facsimiles of prior restraint
Then blushing with the vivacity and unfettered vigor
Of a mutt caught in the act
I tumble forward; Plunging headlong into my private regime
A jihad of such minute proportions
That ripples of struggle and aftershocks of conflicted being
Pool bitterly and stubbornly
Festoons of bygone humanity
The crisping lotus of a younger me

On the nature of things

Constituent bits of matter
From which all things rise and fall
And so doing reclaim their ancient format
Hexagonal princes, pinches of snuff
Tankards of remembrances sloshing
In a rage to be emptied, to earn immolation
We begin to end when we sense our beginning's end
Shuttling to a peak, downcast in perfection
Open a forum to the vocal majority
A mass of men with an odd death wish
whose picture of pleasure
is decadence so acute and so charged
it can hardly be called to memory
And in memoriam we jest
What enters blessed expires ash

Mercantile

I cradle misfortune in a frenzied bas relief of boredom
Mouthing a peeling phallus, puffing greedily
In the midst of broad-fisted raconteurs
Built of meatier stock and smoking stoically
I am aware of only my ass-bone
And even then I shift madly
Brushing ashes from my arms and legs
Choking with the filament of philip morris branding

That it never crossed my mind
crossed my mind as I sat
and sitting at the beginning
I started again, with a brief imitation
Of what I thought I ought to be

F5

Toward the apex
You bend to deconstruction
Find that all is none

Damn

Nanou II

I have a comfortable hand-me-down jacket
Rich with the twang of hand-rolled cigarettes
and tinted here and there by pools of coffee
dropped carelessly from trembling, inexperienced fingers
And staring up at meaningless swaths of beautiful hazelnut branches
I finger its endless oddities, that which set it apart from name-brands
and jackets shown attentive, retail-value care
It's less of me and more of where I go when me becomes too much
A portable cave of annexed ideas and thoughtful conversations
Hour-long stints of gazing mindlessly at shaggy carpeting
When I have nothing
Which is the majority of my parsed time
I suit up in the fineries of homelessness
And in the vacuum of pea-green introspection
I fulfill my needs

Row

I have ten fingers, ten toes

Two eyes – all standard fixings

A healthy number of chromosomes

No known chemical imbalances

But I was created full of lack

In the imperfect image

of an imperfect creator

Spiting the harmony of the cosmos

with an absurd lump of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen

Propped up on average feet

I commit to normalcy

and achieve nothing laudably

going nowhere brilliantly

I succeed in my limit situation

I was created for a single station

and I guard my position with bemusement

Puzzling over implicit simplicities

I crouch near the warm spring of elation

Take gulps in manifold and shrug

Back to work

War of attrition

Bridge the grim chasm

with bath salts and crème liqueur;

Are you happy now?

e-z cheeze

We sit in webs of vicarious inaction.
It's an opportune time: to be unique
you only have to vary slightly.
you only have to shut your jaw
and wipe the spit from your bib
To be apart from the core.
Then, flexing your bony limbs,
you emerge for the longest haul -
the trudge of solitude

Heathen bar

Names- those sickening reminders
that you carry your parents' choices to the grave
abreast the altar of shame, the record of past misgivings
Negotiating between rotting shelves and the scepter of illumination
You're being blinded by the choices you stumbled through, passing
damp tears matted with linen redolent of chamomile tea
Clinging to a sliver of metal overlooking plains of despair
Sloping with the caress of the father's sacrament
and the indomitable burdens of the weeping mother
Skin flayed in raw, rippling sheets of congealed flame
You shriek for hours, pausing only for caught breath
Passing gallstones and nuggets of truth
From the same orifice - that with which you were blessed
To speak honestly, to speak trippingly
You make the grandest speech, gesticulating wildly
Toward an audience with pinholes for ears
And great gobs of running jelly for eyes
Horror spawns of rushing eras
Rebels pining for the final chemical surge
Plug yourself into an EEG machine
a white labyrinth of sterile curses
and whittled demonic phrasing
Sip gingerly on the elixir of life
Put prominence in your poultice
In your peacetime potions
In your perversions of what prevails
Pause only for the shrill of a rudder
Pause only for sanity's sake

An Accompaniment of Nilla Wafers

-I'm submitting a protest to have all recreational drugs legalized.
-Why?
-To escape whatever [this] is.
-What is it that you're so afraid of?
-I'm afraid of death.
-Why is it that you seem to be afraid of everything?
-Everything reminds me of death.
-Dwelling on your fears - that can't be healthy.
-Living generally isn't 'healthy.'
-Neither is neglecting life out of a fear that it'll end.
-I know too much not to fear and know too little to be satisfied.

5-HTP

Beautiful days fraught with dread silence
Rays of sun beat down on chilled limbs
I lay quivering hands on gooseflesh - stroking madly
Seeking the babe's comfort in senseless times
The warmth of a freshly pressed sheet
The inviting aura of a deeply pitted cot
A bed-frame that creaks with endearing signs of age
Contrasted sharply against the sores and aches of adulthood
Huddling near the shower-head in throes of bitter frost
Juggling goals, dreams, and ambitions with the constant
impressment of a life lived in perpetual purposelessness
Wading through meadows of deceit and odious bickering
That is what awaits youth, the expiring wick
Giving way to anathema, cynicism, and wary outlooks
Sun-kissed, wrinkling grins melt through to impure scowls
Baring fangs and widening shock-white eyes
Your animal urge to claw back to the cradle of humanity
Rendered futile in a pentecostal paean of disturbing rage
A yawp so barbarous it hangs on the trestles of night
in an infinitude of disturbed calm

I keep falling asleep while reading

Here comes the thrilling immediacy - the trudging awareness
That curious ease that accompanies foggy stillness
Wreaths of glacial obscurity passing by unaware
Of me, that fool on the corner, or the eyes sidling left to right
Bungled impulses demurring flatly on the slick pavement
absorbing wet detritus from atop cemented leaves
Plotting perfidy and pernicious orations while
the stretch of worldly canvas runs backward unraveling
I huddle with bruised shoulders and bluish lips
Near the towering impasse which divides all knowing
And nursing inches of decayed tobacco leaves
I tacitly dash out ten stanzas in complicit agreement
with the written shade demanding tableau upon tableau
Tugging at heart strings and focus
Retooling the mechanics of my dreams
and drawing a dim, languid curtain
over the brilliant star-stuff of youthful pupils

Speaking unto nations

When an animal faces hardship, it is called survival. When a man faces hardship, it is called absurdity.

Eighteen Years

Presumably unplanned conception, fetal development, birth, intense stimulation, vague amusement, socialization, recognition of constructs, self-consciousness, loss of self-esteem, development of character, adoption of personality traits, intermittent schooling, dread of schooling, further character development, further dread (extended to all stations in life), intermittent schooling, refinement of "talents," external recognition of "skill," feign having life goals, put feigned life goals on applications, intermittent schooling, acceptance into another form of schooling, subsided dread, graduation, dread, dread, dread, stimulant use, novel reading, dread, dread, dread, enter dorm room, slight feeling of hunger, sit on chair, pull up pointless webpage from a catalog of one hundred million equally useless webpages, click "new post," reflect.

Dread, dread, dread - ad infinitum.

Twenty minutes until Rhetoric.

I have twenty minutes until I stumble over to Rhetoric. It's two buildings away -a brisk walk will do. It starts in thirty minutes; I leave in twenty minutes.

In twenty minutes, I'll toss a wax-paper cup in the bin, plug my laptop back in, put my phone in my pocket, get twin sneakers on my feet, zip a jacket up, stuff my backpack with a journal and A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf.

In a little over thirty minutes, I'll talk with a class of semi-harassed honors students about the prudence of women and their relationship to fiction. No soluble sentences said: most of the three chapters will fly over their heads.

In twenty minutes time, I could learn something new, doodle, dawdle, dangle threads, hold my breath until I'm blue. I'll settle for getting ready for class instead.

In high-school, there are no breaks, excepting minute intermissions that rumble and shock over your mind. Twelve minutes of time to do nothing but whine.

In college, it's reversed - nothing's punctual, nothing's terse. Discourse drags when it's not interesting - flows beautifully when it is.

In the grand scheme of things, prepositions reign supreme. Of, for, until, in, and after form my sentences' life blood. Well, syntax can be forgiven, otherwise it'd be endless adverbs and brisk descriptions. Prepositions let you wallow in the meadow of verbal hollow. Prepositions let you thrust through the commonest sentences with laudable prescience.

Ack, I'm late.

I'm posting this from a toilet; Will it still be poignant?

A wise man once said
That there were no positive values
or negative values.
A mob fell on him with rakes,
skewers, and makeshift bludgeons.
A trial-by-law acquitted them all
before the mob took the stand
they pleaded the fifth in unison.
An ethical man rose his hand
Mustache quivering in a fit
of indignation - no one listened.
A dust settled on eyes atrophied
Unused tools set down in pangs of rest
When we see not, we feel not.
An interview was given to
the family of the wise man
They said it was better this way.
One less mouth to feed, one less mouth to hear
An ear - shorn before the casket lowered
was left bloodied on the steps of the courthouse.
A bawdy judge in curls and reeking of wine
Snatched it up for his collection
Of truths unbidden, unsaid - irrespective.

3:1

Basking in the cool, electronic vibrations
his feet dangle inches above wormwood flooring
eyes twitching in intervals of set speed
Flickers to the rhythm of the atonal, haunting
ambiance cascading from burst-twine speakers
He recounts ratios, ineluctable numerals
Gloss-rimmed arabesques glide across the theater box
of his inner eyelids; He gathers enough fortitude
for a wheezing leap into a tight-fitted right pocket
Cracks a zippo; inhales omnipresent convalescence
Off-white billows of bitterness kiss the hollowness
silently building in his living space
An army of what-could-be's and what-should-be's
construct strategies in sightless tents of impotence
Launching biological warfare at the rosy fingered slip of dawn
His eyes cease twitching in a reverse playback of synaptic tension
He tugs at some final glimpse - passes with a sneer on chapped lips
All was full of love

Dream-quote Haiku

Insincerity
The most severe form of sin
You aren't what you say

Ruinous nuisance (amethyst)

I set aflame the brittle, peeling self
Ego-death; I am no longer am
I am no longer was and will be
I am the memory of shivering
The recollection of flesh pooling
In hideous masses, of orgiastic flashes
I am pure locution - legs thrust forward
Looming farther and farther
Pounding the midnight soil
in the unconscious search for kinetic death
Thermodynamic self erasure
Chemical blinders from the sanity shredding
Banality of this mundane realm
This chunk of rock, this seat of pride
This eternal civil war, this hitchhike into
our stolid, ethereal, cinematic mausoleum
Twinkling pupils hovering in the weight of pitch
That blanket of nothing from which we derive
all somethings; we set off on our journey
wailing, vomiting the potent verbiage of life
And knowing only this tremble in terror
at the thought: inhaling clouds of not
and exhaling our beings as mere nutritional value
I take disassociated comfort in the knowledge
That my singular, so far ineffective self
Will breed legions of selves
each armed with an an arsenal
of idiosyncrasies and pleasures earthly
I'll take the black eye
for their kaleidoscopic lives

Pre-Party Haiku

Impeccable fit
This sweater is devilish
I'm climate conscious

That which needs no introduction (but still has one)

Preface: To anyone unfamiliar with the intimacy, necessity, and benefits of having a best friend, this post will seem both alien and cloyingly sentimental. If you would like to avoid glimpsing into what I can recall, recant, and display of an ongoing awesome friendship, stop reading now. If you are hateful, ignorant, or devoid of understanding, then you probably aren't reading this blog anyway. To everyone else, I don't expect you to understand why I felt the need to write this: only know that I'm hopped up on massive amounts of coffee and I've been contemplating something of this nature since Sean and I left for college. 

This is aimed at someone who's not only had a significant impact on my life, but also continues to be an amazing friend over a distance of roughly 1181 miles. I've been spurred to write this because I'm listening to his university-run radio show and while that may seem mundane enough, it's making me reminisce on the massive amount of hours we've spent hanging out, talking, chilling, or even just cruising in silence toward some unnamed, unknowable Nirvana.

My first few memories of Sean were of this judgmental looking kid in Eighth grade. No sugar coating to it: we didn't really enjoy each other from the get go. I'm not entirely sure why that was, but considering how our lives intertwined in high-school, I'd wager a guess that we were too alike. Anyone with a younger sibling that encroaches on what they perceive as their unique personality traits can testify to how irritating it is having your identity - your sole "possession" on earth- seemingly replicated with ease. 

That being said, we didn't have enough contact in Eighth grade for me to claim that we "hated each other." Being able to say that would make our time-tested friendship seem much cooler, so we'll stick with the initial hatred. The lack of contact was because I was only slightly connected to Sean's group of friends. While I chummed around with Ali Siddiqui, Chris Catino (whose friendship I could dedicate an entire other blog post to), Paul Tosello, and Kyle Harrison, Sean mainly dealt with people like Jacob Williamson, Robert Hassler, Cole Miltenberger, and a few others I can't remember because, as stated before, I wasn't in the pack. Many of these people would go on to make up the majority of my friends in high school, particularly Jacob, Cole, and the like. 

Our lives only intersected insofar as our various friends connected. We also both simultaneously adored Mrs. Pulse. I admired her for her sense of humor and the way she exuded a feeling that you could speak freely without worry of censorship. Sean and I both despise censorship, and I suspect that was a major factor in how we felt about our English teacher. 

Ninth grade saw the shedding of layers that would lead to a nearly indomitable partnership. We're talking FDR and Churchill here, or Hitler and Goebbels if you're aligned with the Axis. Sean and I sat at the same table for lunch on B-days, and while I could sense some tension at first, the way our senses of humor complemented each other made it inevitable that we would become friends. I'm sincerely glad that what was a chance arrangement of schedules led to this outcome, because (and I'm sure he agrees) our friendship has been a fundamental feature of my life for the past few years and will continue to be. 

It was largely through that budding congeniality that Sean convinced me to join Newspaper. That too would be a defining feature of my life, and considering the amount of money SMU paid me to major in Journalism, I don't regret switching 3rd Pre-AP Computer Science for what would become a source of a wealth of inside jokes, friendships, amazing nights, horrible nights, and truly terrible puns (i.e.: The Snitchuation)

I'll be honest, I was terrified of Newspaper. Sean can attest to that, and while it seems ridiculous in hindsight (given that we came to be the mastheads of that class), that anxiety stayed with me throughout every story idea day (yikes). Mingled with my terror was an awe I was quick to hide. I was in awe of the part Sean played in the class as a freshman. He had already written multiple stories, and written them well, while I came in halfway through with no idea of how to use InDesign, how to deal with upperclassmen, or how to get chided for penning a beginner's attempt at a Feature (see: my story on Anonymous and Web Hacktivism). 

Sean guided me through that process, though, and I came to get the general feel of writing the type of stories I would continue to churn out month after month (mainly stories consisting of 80 percent bullshit and 20 percent aforementioned terrible puns). Given that I would soon learn how frustrating dealing with beginners is, I'm thankful he was overtly patient. If my memory serves me correctly (although weed played a role in our friendship down the line, my memory typically serves me well), I went to Sean's old house near Ali Siddiqui's and he essentially wrote the story for me. I'm not ashamed to say it: I got Nikki Dahlson'd. It was humbling, but like I said before, I don't regret joining that class. I do, however, regret the number of times I brushed off Newspaper (as in, not doing a single interview until six weeks into my Freshman year of college) while Sean put in hours to build the website and deal with Mrs. Rose. 

The crux of our shared classes was, as detailed above, Newspaper, but Sean and I both went through several other decently interesting subjects from Sophomore year onward. Excepting Newspaper, we shared AP Human Geography, AP World History, Pre-AP Spanish III, and Pre-AP Chemistry. 

Those four classes tempered the major themes of our friendship and gave us enough face-time to develop tough-knit ties. AP Human Geography was, in collegiate hindsight, a pretty accurate glimpse into a college class. There was a greater amount of dialogue between the students and the domineeringly large, condescending, yet somehow likable teacher. This dialectic nature was aided by the minute nature of the class size (5 students: Sarah Ally, Patrick Graham, Lilly Darwish, Sean, and I) and the unconventional aspect of the course material. We got to negotiate through fields of study hitherto unknown to us, and if I could retake that same class I'm sure I would get much more out of it than my 16 year old self managed to glean (4 on the AP Test, not overly shabby). To keep it real, though, I don't mean to make it sound professional or especially enlightening. We mostly cracked jokes, talked to Patrick, and overwhelmed Ms. Cassetta with our ability to wend any conversation in the tangent of our choosing (Sean was much better at that than I could claim to be). Sean would come late most days, which was odd because he had recently moved close to the school. I don't really need to go into how that worked considering he's the targeted audience of this post (hey dude!) and he knows the mechanics of early morning organization. 

That ability to turn a class into a roost of jokes, good vibes, and tangents dominated the three other courses mentioned. In Pre-AP Spanish III, we would alternate between ragging on Mrs. Benitez (Boooooothhhhh) and Matt Robinson. The former because most high-school teachers are deserving objects of ire and the latter because he's both amazingly easy to make fun of and gullible enough to think he's in on the jokes. That being said, Matt didn't choose to be that way, and he was generally nice enough to cancel out the immediate effects of his apparent idiocy. Sean continued to study Spanish in Junior and Senior year, but I stopped because I intended to repair my GPA Junior year and as such I eliminated all clutter. As I'm studying Arabic now, I feel much more suited to the language and am not at loggarheads with the complexities of linguistics like I was towards the end of Sophomore year. My inability to succeed in that class was, however, also due to a bout with depression early on in Sophomore year that put a damper on the entire semester (damp as in I was failing Algebra 2 at one point damp). 

AP World History is something that simultaneously deserves page upon page of exposition and requires no narrative (to Sean, at least). He understands the importance of that class, particularly in that it led to our taking AP European History. While we negotiated through chapter after chapter of the amazingly boring Stearns text, I'd like to think we had an overall decent time. Mrs. Prado, specifically, added to the atmosphere. Going in I had this preconceived notion of her as this hierarchical bitch that ruled with an iron fist (I often confuse my teachers with former Conservative Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Margaret Thatcher), but after a few months of her quips and exposure to her teaching style, I appreciated her much more. Again, I got a 4 on the AP Test, which I'll chalk up to either sheer plumb bad nerves, beginner's misfortune, or the previously mentioned "dampness." Another defining feature of that class was Keaton calling the pope the "poop." Let's just peg that Freudian slip on a fecal fetish (it would explain so, so much). 

Onto Pre-AP Chemistry: a compound lol-fest, free-for-all, open-mic night, story-telling hour, show-n-tell, and year long free A (excluding the horrid 'Months of Graf'). That was also one of the classes I shared with Maddie, along with Quest a la Ms. Fowler, who we can all agree was an insane piece of work. My relationship with Maddie was above all an amazing experience, and I wouldn't take it back given the option. If there's anything that it can add to this blog post in particular, it's that throughout the period of time when I gave most of my attention, clandestine notes, and texts to her, Sean still kept our friendship alive, while I lost a certain amount of less well-founded friendships. I know my intimacy with Maddie caused tension between her and Sean, but for the record you both disliked each other almost evenly, and considering that there were no hard feelings between you towards the end of high school, I say let that hatchet remain buried. 

I imagine the reasons we dug Mrs. Cruze were analogous to the manifold reasons we deeply admired Mrs. Pulse. She - at the cost of certain career positions and (I'm assuming) relationships - was incapable of/discouraged censorship. That quality, in concert with shades of Libertarianism and Capitalism, forms the fulcrum of our shared method of approaching sociopolitical phenomena. It's rare that Sean and I disagree on a topic, which one would think cancels out the possibility of interesting conversations, but we manage (through humor and intense bouts of free-speech). 

Newspaper throughout the course of Sophomore year was definitely less nerve-wracking than it had been the latter half of Freshman year. We were still underlings, though, and that always establishes an overarching feeling of inferiority (at least it did for me). It wasn't until Junior Year that I felt like we had the complete run of the class, due in large parts to Sean's momentous position as Editor-In-Chief and the transitional period in which we struggled to strip the essence of a printed periodical and somehow (we never tried Alchemy) transmogrify it into a functional website. I'm not completely self-important (okay I kind of am), but if I had put in more effort/appeared to care about the Newspaper, it might have gone in a different direction and we might not have been at constant odds with the limits of poorly managed technology. There's really no point in wishing for that, though, because at the time I genuinely didn't care about the future of the Newspaper and even found a vague sort of satisfaction in thinking it would crash and burn after we left. I guess I wasn't in tune to how emblematic our own struggles were of the overall ambiance of journalism as a practice. Shit, indeed, is on tremulous foundations in the land of the Fourth Estate. 

That I had my first experiences with weed Sophomore year didn't have an appreciable impact on our friendship. If I perceived that inaccurately, than I was either uncharacteristically unobservant or too distracted to properly metabolize the situation. In either case: my apologies. 

For now I'll leave off this narrative and continue later with Junior and Senior year. 

A Clean, Well-Lighted Place

You worship Mother Mary from an altar
I falter, offering supplication from a bar-stool
In Barstow, like Charles Marlow I dabble
In rivers of hollow, combating darkness and
emptiness wherever the sequence follows
Entire hosts of slave trade amulets
Passed from grubby fists into money pits
For Imperial profit and mocked solace
Peace in warfare - love in shame
Predatory silence, the deeply inhumane
Drumming up jihad with the wick of a Lion's mane
And souls are stained with rapidity
The only purity left is fluid currency
Monetized efficiency and tooled bureaucracy
Burning the midnight oil to renounce
IRS interests and contracts of ulterior benefit
Polaroid filaments exhibiting the high speed images
Of cross-dressing, effervescent, trend setting
Hell-bent fretting, quick pressing, mutinous
Soldiers-of-misfortune hunting the gates of Heaven
You'd pay an arm and a leg to get repackaged
Inside the rusted tin you were delivered in
But the only deliverance imminent
is a vial of demon spit and the bliss at the end of it

Hatful of Hollow

My body careens with the chemical coffee rage
Forced absolution, smarting eyes, and flushed skin
Adrenaline coursing through veins - the water of life
A primal rejection of discordant absurdity
I return to the hearth; embracing immolation
The phoenix flame of perpetual beginning
Replaying the scene as such:
"Now my fair cousin,
if we are marked to die
we are enough to do our country loss
and if to live, the fewer men
the greater share of honor"
The breadth of history separates
me from idol formations - heroes
more deserving of tribute than any
dwarf that stumbles through the present day
The breadth of history separates
me from golden rays and ideal
conditions: jubilant trivial tidings
A haughty love of simply being
The breadth of history separates
me from that which I yearn for
The foolish belief that there
is something greater than this
The breadth of history separates
me from utopia; without the breadth,
I couldn't blind myself with hope
Damn distance - the paradoxical imperative

Alsace-Lorraine

Grimacing, drawn faces hung grimly in densely black quarters
contemplating the trifling banalities of war
A rotting mug sloshing with amber broth - sickly brew
Frost-speckled cheeks and numbing toes
There were intermittent barks and howls
Interregnums of fear - the likes of which
draft with the wind; pricking the nostrils of dogs
who paw the barren earth expressing hunger pangs
Pouncing on fat, waddling rodents under the veil of midnight
There were fools, prophets, messiahs; operating in military guise:
Officers, men-at-arms, generals
Legions of blank slates offered at the altar and
incised with penetrating pigments
Permanent, irrevocable alterations
Tics and repressions - flicks of potential savagery
Tools honed of their own volition
And set against the sentiments of ideologues
We hate the predatory reality
Yet cling to the smoking gun

La Peste

Now we come to the end of our discontent
Half a year spent whittling, working
Scrimmaging tooth and nail against pestilence
And the hairless brood that bore it
A Summer of wiles - violent, short lived passions
Autumnal quickening - a cooled pace in the trot
That we have striven through unmentionable circumstance
Is forgotten as we shrug off weariness and ascend the throne
That we begged for nestling blankets
And instead were given nettles - rankling
Is an event we will excise from collective memory
As sorest are the bruises that bloom without patience
The easiest to bear -a badge branded with masterful strokes

Forget human love, divine grace
Forget burdened eyes, tangled lace
All is final, all is won
When scorn is set and fealty sworn

Late night/Early morning haiku

I am now awake
But this is much too early
Sleep will come later

Someone told me

I am largely kept buoyant by minute tidings
Little bursts of happiness unevenly distributed
Throughout my day: the first waft of piping hot coffee
An alluring crease on the smile of a passerby
Lyrics from a beloved song, the glint of life
In Francoise Hardy's eyes as she serenades
Perfect; inescapably perfect moments
The recollection of which
Keep a check on the growing
veil of nothingness in which
I come to cloak myself
Alabaster, clairvoyant glimpses
into the realm of possibility
The ideal state of contentedness
A flimsy bubble reflecting images
Of translucent grasps, quick kisses
The passing of a finger over pale skin
A rush of feigned embarrassment
All these and more as I daydream of loving
Again and again, a brick to the base of my head
The self-harming practice of putting
Too much stock in the golden wisps of the past
And the inexplicably radiant sweeps of the future

I've forgotten how to occupy now
Doomed to a mythical punishment
Of blinders fixed in narrowness
toward reminiscences and hopeful wishes
Bliss is a life devoid of reflection
And waxing prosaic over simple statements
Bliss is a life of tending to the cares
of the moment, and moving sequentially
Bliss is the life of an idiot - -
We are a deeply joyous people

Late afternoon post-class haiku

Suddenly I wake
In the midst of a lecture
The solution: coffee break

Mid-morning cafeteria haiku

Useless drawstring bag

You contain nothing - it seems

Why, then, are you worn? 

Populace (of) prepositions

There's a beauty to shame
In having your head lowered
into your own vomit and ruffled messily

There's a special nature to humility
In having rocks and pebbles pelted
at whiplash speed because of your preferences

There's something dear to hate
In the menacing twinkling
of eyes set sanguine by blistering rage

There's a quality unknown to man
In the end-notes of life's literature
a truth glanced over by academics

There's an end to all movement
In the leavened pulse
That reverberates through finitude

Rieux, rats, and relief

Charge of the crumpled coward

thinly veined forehead crinkling in the foggy stillness 

Sickening lines invading my vision 

splayed in the momentary dance of a frame by frame seizure

Paralyzed with unidentifiable shock - jarring alien poison 

Clouds of wispy pain and solidifying madness 

Impinge constantly: delirious, I stumble in tune

In step and in concert with the mundane rhythm 

The reason of the regular, the structure of the standard

Trembling in normality, humming odes to familiar stagnancy

The appearance of verisimilitude in all things 

All truths and all time-tested, honored facts

shackled to the back of our necks with tightly wound chicken wire

Fencing that prevents due exploration 

Hemming that draws in curiosity and side checks peculiarity

In an instant I see fields of chained would-be's 

Would-be philosophers, would-be wizened men 

Would-be kingly prefects, would-be enlightened teachers

Crushed by the immovable, immutable chain link self-imposition 

The birth right proposition: humans are destined to waver

between minimal success and abject failure 

We accept it -  first coldly, later comfortably 

Our crux, our center, our single source of warmth

A reassuring nod from the giant of Bad Faith

In shouldering every parcel we deliver no substance

Behemoths of all; worms of none 

Starving, rambling, pitched tent war hawks

Flinging wine in celebratory feats 

Bounding through cloying fields, sap thickening 

between our jellied toes

Who will save the heroes 

When the last bit of awareness

Is sheltered within cowardice 

Frater diligo

Nothing could be done to efface or erase the disgust
Written on his face in gorges and pits of quickly earned age
Heavy packs of shadowy stubble entangling a gaunt frown
Hooded sweatshirt hiked up around his ears
Armor from the world - the world is his source of misfortune
A stunted lifetime of liquor soaked reminiscences
Tennessee honey vats and alchemical homebrews
Barrels of bathtub gin to disrupt the even flow of suffering
To introduce discord into the overwhelming tide of being
He imbibes and struts to summon the absurd
and bask in its beautiful, blinding cascades of light
Fluctuating between haunting dirges and cheap
thrills: fumbling syntax from relapse to deaf ears
I don't recall time before the fact
of his disillusioned self, a monster of disquiet
that pervades my own notions of certainty
His perpetual doubt calls into question
all I've considered sealed and answered
This drunken pimpernel; this Socrates of dribbling booze
and ludicrous bouts of Lil Wayne lyrics
I see his skeleton peering out, eager for an errant cue
His time is short - that much is clear
But after time ends, where do the bits
and parcels within the clock go to mourn?
How do the cogs and minute hand
reconcile years of adrenal shock?
Brutal agony and repression - a middle class concern
His prophecy was made under bated breath
Stinking with the redolence of finely crafted whiskey
It croaked of its own accord:
"All that once was will cease unto the gripping blackness
and in so doing reclaim the life before life
All pain, all anguish, all years spent twiddling
thumbs and grimacing in memorium - dissolved
in the alkaline rebirth of decomposition"
My only wish is that when the truth comes
to fruition, I'm near the hearth
Warming my hands for Winter's approach

Pius IX

Marx told me that all my sentiments were clap-trap
That my veil of religious, political, and social associations
Were systems of obligation centered on capital
Centered on the means of production, the harboring of property
He twisted his off-gray beard in a pantomime of contemplation
Barking histrionics at the top of Prussian-bred lungs
Stout legs planted firmly on the grimy table-tops of pubs
He climbs over the fencing of text and jeers at all I hold dear
Marx has a hard-on for the bourgeoisie
The spectre of communism - made whole by tangible shades
Appreciable modes of trade, accumulated methods of living
From the idealism of patriarchy to the arbitrary ties we bind
Journeymen fumbling blind through nonlinear time
We shut the artisanal shop, we deign to feast on slop
We are horrified at the turn of events
Yet we perpetuate their occurrence; in this masochist
display of perambulating ungracefully, of tottering
between privatized interest and public domain property
We create crises in order to fulfill some vague yearning
For action, for excitation, for depression - foggy misfortune
We yearn, again, for the dripping faucet, the empty pantries
The immolation of systemics in our households
Screaming for bloody chaos, ruinous affairs
We sprint from what was to what will be
Grimacing in hopes that we'll somehow skip the present
The double-dutch of self-deception
Take your plunge and follow Lenin

Extended simile on getting high

Getting high is like being woven into your most treasured symphony
Knit between the crashing crescendos of penned notes
And the wheedling, wavering contrasts surrounding decibel peaks
You stare at the majesty of a consumptive work of genius
As it sidles its way around your ankles, across your torso
And devours your essence with the unique appetite of brilliance
You become a quarter-note, you pipe up for a moment
Then resume hushed excitation until the cycle repeats
You glare at the woodwinds as they press forward
Beckoning louder and louder until the piece reaches orgasm
And blanks in the white totality of pure subjectivity
You shudder uncontrollably, unconscious of your contribution
To a masterful phenomenon, the freeway of expression that is music
In the same way, getting high viscerally disconnects you from your surroundings
But in the process you gain what was once an unconscionable amount of clarity
Lucidity that extends past the trend of reason and dips into clairvoyance
A memory swallowed by a dream sewn into the fabric of an instinct
All forms of knowing collapse in a tidal wave of rapidly intensifying staccato
Maids brush the dust off neglected folios
And sitting in a semicircular pool of expansive light rays
They begin to read the exposition of emotion
The entropy of a classical composition
Chaos from order, dizzying heights from crusty earth
Wind-whipped hair, knuckles chaffed through wizened journeying
They finish the piece in tremors, timid to execute
But the plan unfolds itself at will in their minds
The mechanism of man finds its host
And the seed of passion is borne upon their blouses
Burrs of brilliant creation, stinging throes of ingenuity
Getting high puts you in the sphere of association
That binds each syllable, each enzyme, each acid
Getting high opens you to a door without hinges
We fear ultimatums and choose instead yellow tape
Caution signs and propagandist glee
It'll serve for a time, but the soul yearns for community
Most easily found in the meadow of pipe-dreams

Petit Fonctionnaire

We are approaching the end of the funerary flame
Youth's wick has begun to expire and with it
False expectations and reliance on once sound structures
We have kindled the holocaust of trodden ideals
Miasma lingers on tomes in the textual mausoleum of determinism
Our essence has reached its ultimate formation
All acts from this point until our final exits
Will be ancillary - oblique attempts to paw away finitude
We have become prosaic mosaics of internalized statements
Each errant thought, each passing notion that conflicted with our projections
Etches itself in deep creases, resisting extermination by anointment
Resisting daily efforts to purge our skin of vestigial sin
We have taken it upon ourselves to cap the candle of contracts
To snuff the shining doctrine of the noble savage, to wrangle
and lock into place rustling idioms - hobbling in their frailty
We are the beings unto finality, star-stuff brilliantly assembled
In forms hitherto unknown and in constant revision
Travelling billions of light years through awe inspiring sight-scapes
To be dropped in this mundane cage and have the key shattered
Before our ephemeral, doting eyes; to be synthesized as ration meal
For starving congressmen and the one percent of privileged interest
That is our purpose, then, to hearken back to Feudalism
and no longer fret about pretending that we live in a classless realm
We have entered the long winter of ethics
Cosmopolitan nuance bled before the altar of uniformity
The ritual sacrifice of what makes life palatable
Of what we brush off eye-crust in the morning to pursue
For that which we imbibe stimulating root drinks and
eastern tonics to enliven
This American Life: our perpetual stroll
A humdrum dilly-dally through a gallery of endless sufferings
We chuckle and guzzle - incapable of empathy
We avoid beauty and instead feature regularity
Any action that would preserve a base
is stalwart, noble, and in service of our great democracy
Any loose-footing that suggests a toe gently chucked over the line
is insanity - decried as a national emergency
We will never be content because to be content is to live comfortably
And we drive hot-needles into constancy
Choosing, rather, a life of self-imposed depravity
So one day we will become the 'real' us
Instead of this mass of fugue-stricken sheep that clamor
For restful sleep

Herbert Spencer said

Behind barred doors and blocked entrances

An orgy of cut-off sentences and remembrances

That wages war on the reticence of innocents

And makes energetic imbeciles out of languid ignorance

Your reality; your truth is a splayed narrative of incidents

That formed your perspective, and your paradigm is ineffective

Attempts at dialectic fizzle into hectic vectors 

Pinging in the incorrect direction and betraying your inflection

The incentive and motive behind all your earthly friendships

Lips pursed in sour facial expressions to throw off 

those who would doubt the sincerity of your existence

Terminal solemnity, the type that establishes your dignity

As you tread the path of Cain, unable to parry blame 

Problems taste sweeter at the moment of collapse

When we relapse into recognizing innate knowledge

And leap through foliage - a nod at ancestral practices

A retracing of our genetic imperative to digest our surroundings
To construct tools, to construct living spaces, to construct language
To implement the tidings of culture and weld together a bastion
Of human empire, the arc of time shows a brilliant display
Lights springing forth from the immense darkness - the celestial prison cell
We were our own jailers and all it took was a clink in our mechanisms
To liberate the covenant of man - the creation of abstractions
We imbued ourselves with timeless principles: freedom, justice, and nobility
And so we too became devoid of time, we smashed our inner clocks
Like Luddites in endless pursuit of nebulous immortality
Some form - some forgotten form would make itself known
If only we plodded on for an hour longer, if only we were saints
Instead of savages chipping at bone-meal for milk white marrow
Sluicing, stripping, sexually dominating the dirt beneath our cracked heels
Thrusting square hands into the squalid earth and negotiating terms of agreement
We made the fated trade; the compact between man and land - beads for all
With my possessions in tow: a trunk of nostalgia, a jaundiced frame, and acrimony
I careen against the tide - the flow of convention
I lay against the tracks
I wait for the 3:30 connection to some local station
See the globe of light stalk nearer
I follow myself into the endless jig; the eternal ink stain

Bishop Avenue

I am haunted by graceful actions
Carefree, spontaneous kindnesses
Form a fruitful fungus on my memory
A padding of hard-tack, a cushion of disbelief
An aching to reciprocate coupled
with an inability to fathom returned courtesies
I am haunted by the flickering lights
Near benches outside of my building
Whittling hours away - the sole inclination
to socialize and inhale toxic substances
Discussions of consequence are wholly absent
There's only now- and an abundance at that
I am haunted by the adoration present
In every intimate detail of creation
Each nook and cranny, each mote of dust
A cloud of gnats ignorant to my cognizance
Manifested hive-minds: a life through consensus
I am haunted by the inflation of ignorance
That's synergistic with my heightened awareness
Though with days spent bowed in stern contemplation
I begin to seek the root - the very trace of it
Whether I hunt chimeras or am the catalyst
It could be all my anxieties are figmentary
I am haunted by the illusion of order
the subtle switch in perspective
that nuanced flip, that whiff of a difference
Knowing the arbitrariness of my past tyrants
You have given me the liberty to roam in perpetuity
But I cradle to the tomb, I beg for the final womb
I am haunted by my dependency
On dopamine, on crucibles, on glory
A single edict of praise from a peer
Or an elder - this I find elating
But any hint that will-to-laud has faded
nourishes my wishful impulses, leaves me in bitterness
I am haunted by the circles I trace
In the grains of sand - the paths of my spirit
Infinite loops, tracks without end
And all for the satisfaction of adolescent vestiges
Again I bend the knee in shame, brow in knots
Hail to the haunting: reminders that I've a soul to quake

The Stoic

The dissuasion I feel with demonstrability
Is the ability for amicability to form a causeway
Of criticism; words we would normally inhibit
Become exhibited in intimate conversations
Repressed impulses, manifestations of lustful desire
Yearning to criticize all of creation spitefully
Despite the socialization we are fed at a formative stage
The reptilian drum-beat continues to pulse
And our blanketed rage bobs in tune
A cobra wafting menacingly from its Hindu spitoon
The cocoon of eggshells we've tread compiles
Encompassing the sentences unsaid
And the sentiments of yesteryear
Masking the phenomenon of open discourse
We lie to ourselves actively
We accept the lies of others passively
Negating the rationale that should come easily
We negotiate nimble movements to circumvent truthful dialogue
In analogs emulating scarring glimpses into adulthood
Screeching arguments dragging from bedside to bathroom
Lipstick caps thrown in disarray and frayed notions
Of stability: essentially, my frailty is due to a faulty upbringing
And the clanging of cymbals that cripples my conscience
The throng of disturbances - hemlock to my conscious self
A drip in the ear did me in, I give thanks to Claudius
And all the odious presences within
Harbingers of sin, those nightly war mongers
Those somnambulists of pernicious intent
Fragmentary soldiers of fortune born of a distorted ethos
Lunar alms to the men of action, quick to fractiousness
Who compartmentalize emotion and split complexities
In fractions: that simplistic mathematics I find insoluble
Nothing is determined when all is appreciable
All pathways glimmer with idealism in transience
Which is why I'm given to tangents and
The extensive use of stimulants - namely, caffeine
Fatty acids, herbal extracts, and deadpan semiotics
Black comedy that falls on deaf ears
I'm a punchline incarnate, the carnal clown
Of nonsense and entranced utterances
Of uncomfortable eye-contact and brittle
attempts at social connection
I'm the prehistoric infection, a recursion of
Man embodied by primal urges
So I'll continue my perpetual excursion
Into huddled words - the church of language

Trippingly on the tongue

I see billboards plastered with the polystyrene grins
of elected officials, pneumatic prophets;
running on pure steam, the energy of imbeciles
Kinetic pipe-dreams, delusion in motion
Intriguing possibilities hinged on wavering towers
Posts of rotting holly-wood in back alley lots
Methamphetamine molars smashed into boonie brittle
and left on the bottom of half-ingested, off-brand soda cans
I say maddening things in times of rest
Dialogues from forgotten performances, theatrical grandeur
Visions - tackling members of the congregation
In nothing but my hole-rent socks and blood-smeared smock
I mumble passionately, deliver pages of gibberish fervently
Yield nonsense from the reactants of eloquence and false rest
Lend me your ears, lend me your dreamscapes
Lend me your deja vu, lend me the certainty that all collapses into none
Or maybe just a hint of an answer to the essential question
Of my being: namely, how do I 'be' properly?
How do I resolve my rationed knowledge
when I've learned to compact mass concepts
Into vague notions - piecemeal abstractions
How do I hint at this pervasive unease to
those who see me as a breeze of good-will
and a catalog of endearing facial expressions

Take Gordon, take Cameron
Take discourse, take Hamlet
Incinerate your copies of coffee-table tableau
And all the bargain-priced pablum you
thrive on; no more veneers, no more gilded rage
We want tits, fish and chips, stinging
pleasures, and most of all: the right
to bask in the purity of dopamine
The right to be average
Mean aggregates of all past brilliance
All talented geniuses
Flatten into the trend of our species
This line of best-fit - an excuse to be regular

Broke bad

Embittered resolve dissolves on my bed-spread

The interplay of light and sheets, a shadowy show

of clouds passing hills, the coruscation of woodwinds 

and the wheezy crescendo of weak instruments winding

through my eardrums; I blink, I blink twice

I measure the scale of the room through crust-rimmed pupils

I palm a greasy scalp, exhale through a web of mucus and

ephemeral recollections - dregs of the night's dreams creak

in a reel of psychoanalytic hogwash, interpretive nonsense

textbook cases of hallucination and visual distortion

That mark me as a mid-grade madman, look Ma;

I found a way to make insanity average

I make mental illness palatable, I make HBO late-night

programming into Lifetime specials, where bad endings

can be erased by Ben & Jerry binges and a particular

type of Semitic self-critique: "I should really get to bed,

I hardly sleep enough, that must be why I'm neurotic

That must be why I juggle numbers and blueprints

of silos in my head when people try to interact with me,"

That verbiage, that prattling on and on; your problems

are a construction that your mind has fabricated

because you got bored living a normal, ceaseless

Sans Coda existence, you needed Gnossienes and 

clanging, you were starved for cymbal warring and 

tom-tom thumping, you plead for a heart of darkness

a life of calamity, you stare wistfully at images of 

malnourished children and see a profit to be made

Off warfare, off sacrilege, off blasphemy

You sit in your faux silk-lined IKEA throne

and deign to the masses, the lower classes

forgetting that the room is entirely empty

and would stay that way if you brought an end

to these sickening attempts at emotional sovereignty

You want control over the chasm of meaninglessness

that has become your passing of days

You want a hand on the reigns so damn badly

That you've woven a cool web of language

Placing you in disadvantage

So you have at least a meager chance of progress

While the lucid-eyed, meek men chuckle under their breath

and witness a fool blindly crawling in a straight line

Birth waltz

We with pickled eyes
Chew bits of fetid candy in fields
of darkness; pulsating fervor
Staunch shame melting from once-stoic
bodies, now formless, now fearless
Now the end result of man
A being existent in one segment of time
A being at odds with the past and the future
With anxiety, depression, and racks
of medicine cabinet wives' tales
We the oracles of truth
expired crates of vermouth dribbling
From concussed temples
Dilated pupils entombed in casks
Of filtered spirits, ales, and vodkas
Liquored neurons and flickering tempers
An elegy, then, for our forgotten friends
Who dipped off the path of excellence
Who were trucked off in wheelbarrows
For dissension, for clamoring to walk outdoors
For more than they could bargain for
Those husky, vibrato aspirants
Shout down your terrors, crunch them
into Pandora's box, organize your anathema
So that one day we can arrange your doom
And all chains, all histories writ large on LCD screens
Will wither away in the phoenix flame
The flame of new - that irresistible itch
We the scratchers of an age
Whose lives are broad, uninspired strokes
punctuated my moments of intense, sensual violence
will antagonize and pester until the old
bleeds, and we will watch mercilessly
As sand passes through sieve
And the chessboard empties;
We hunger for the perpetual game

The Psychotic Dr. Schreber

I'm terminally over-caffeinated

Self-medicated, pejoratively self-critical

Hyperbolically in-tune with others' failings

Almost permanently masked by sweat and grime

But they don't like me because of my middle name

I'm liberal when it's fashionable

Self-effacing, injuriously self-immolating

Paradoxically at odds with moneyed interest

Capable of near-total outlook vacillation

But they don't like me because I'm from a bad, bad place

I'm ignorant of trends and when to adopt them

Self-centered to the point of pure loneliness

Homely to the nth degree

And quick to switch from what my peers are expecting

But they don't like me because I remind them of Saddam

I'm unoriginal, an idea thief

An overly dignified crook

And I can't keep to poem schemes

I'm an undeserving intellectual (at the expense of my family)

But they don't like me because of their geographic insensitivity

I fear too much and live too little

Cursed with thinking love is fortune cookie drivel

Emotions on a swivel, as ill-judging as a cudgel

With the self-esteem issues of a past pudgy teen

But they don't like me because I'm the Lawrence of Arabia

I'm residual with my memories

All the yesterdays bunch in collective conspiracy

To make my present a foggy mess of indecisiveness

I'm blighted by constant incontinence

But they don't like me because I bleed olive green

They don't like what I represent

and I despise the state of affairs

So we'll keep to this cloying game

This mawkish dance; this sickly, tenuous

scheme: I'll walk past shuffling

You'll pretend not to notice

I have nothing of value to say 

And the world spins begrudgingly  

Another day, another vice

This is the day we subsist all rights to a higher power
On the crucifix of confidence
When each citizen is an Iscariot
Following the tune of rehearsed submission
For years - to parents, to stronger men, to a more potent decibel
No Matthew of Levi will clamor to be christened
In the aftershock of due murder
There will only be the profound silence of shame
The silence we express in sentence fragments and
accelerated social interactions
The shock of waking to a bed pooling with sweat
Aromatic of pure, pungent fear;
We'd trample our messiah for Black Friday sales
For a penny saved, all the liberties in the world
Those naturalized items, those beautiful abstractions
Imbued to us at birth, by the sole action of breathing
And interrupting our bastardly communion
We trade our pottage for high-fructose corn syrup
For the dribbling nonsense from Monsanto
For the images of Squanto kneeling, depressed
In the midst of cartoon pilgrims
As cognitive-behavioral anathema: a treat
MK-Ultra, the ultimately unpalatable idea
That all my thoughts were made in china
Competitively priced and shipped to specificity
That the colors of my flag do run, and sometimes
they sprint to the bark of a tyrant's race pistol

When the most charming man on the planet
Runs the most divided government in history
and buffers potshots from Chris Christie
All the people see is a pile of shattered rib-cages
A mountain-top orgy of soothsaying pundits;
And the ENRON-spawned pentagon whistles on
Just four more years, please
Just one more song

The Power of Life

"When that yellow moon begins to beam
Every night I dream my little dream"
and each push against decay is liquor to the brain
I strive to shrug off the breadth of my time
When every lacquered rhyme and hollow hail mary
is a recursion of 'I think therefore I am'
I think therefore I'm terrified
Of the end, and what'll be
and I think that passion's fits
are nothing more than the human inside
protesting against undue reservation
clawing at the sheen of rampant insularity
attempting to do away with that tragic flaw
we all love a discourse, until, of course
we face the inevitable nausea of knowing
And each conversation dribbles into this
pool of wax that is innate terror
Each loaded phrase, each apathetic greeting
is a place-holder for the truth
is there instead of what we mean to say
that which we mean struggles in our dreams
and kicks our sheets in restless half-sleep

I wake near the base of a chalk-white mountain
Littered with the ash of my ancestors
I inhale the joy of fate
sputtering, seizing with temporality
My last breaths are a monument
to never having lived
I return to the womb as I left
At peace with the idea of nothingness

Sleep-Tite Tea and Marmalade

Here I face the orchard of choice
Within the parameters of what I know is unknown
A slide-rule of infectious ignorance that starts
at the atomic level and extends past the atmosphere
Past the macro-verse of unrehearsed humanity
I know that all I know is the pleasure of not knowing
I breed the impulse of insatiable metaphors and
untenable quirks, that driving force of all structure
That chemical mishap that evolved our brains
from advanced micro-processors into stations of empathy
From that freak occurrence, that completely unpredictable
shot in the dark of uncounted millennium
Here, again, the expanse of granulated freedom
A choice-by-choice lineation viewed as a singular swath of life
Whether it is better to live dangerously in heeding
the corporeal self above other dependent selves
or to live in the sway of ideals

Could it be that each choice is the same?
That the pursuit of individual joy is something
that benefits all
In viewing magnanimous men of action
We haunted, fearful men of inertia
quake in ecstasy and gather precepts of
inspiration. We becomes ourselves through intimating
our conceptions of others
We become ourselves through emulation
Through radicalism, through class-warfare
Through liberal nonsense and stilted ethics
We become we by turning away from us

Bread for the circus

More wine, red wine
and roses thrown near soiled feet
Pleasures, please, configure yourselves
To entertain; to distract
Provide a veil from this
insane carousel of pitiable nonsense
the interminable passing of days
Each minute detail horrifying and
blindingly nostalgic
Forgive the priestly man his collar
The loose woman her undergarment
Suffer the children their ignorance
so that one day we may join them
so that all the books will be unwritten
so that time itself will unwind
so that we may remember what it is
to forget the structures that have made us
feel superiority and levity toward the lower class

We'll have loaves for the tumbling juggler
Tins of stale fruit for the mirage, as
the ringleader's flesh is torn from his breast
And the crowd applauds his adage

Kuhnilingus

I have dreams about mutilated genitals
Never in the pursuit of shock-value
It's nonchalant, no caveat for the horror
Splendid, then, take the blade to your gender
Your preconceived notions are boiled down
Less simple than sin, more problematic than ethics
Beyond good and evil, there is one truth:
We are defined by what dangles between our legs
And more specifically, the length of the dangle
For each interaction, we agree on a silent pact
The contract of the differential
The self-winding chronicle
That congests the airwaves, Miller Lite commercials
Or the way you walk past certain genders
Whether your eyes linger, whether they quickly avert
And whether you'll admit to either action
The problem resides in more than halted impulse
It's the very essence of our being
Drawing constant distinctions for survival
That necessitates, on occasion, we draw far too many
And end up in the post-aborted, Chaz Bono world
of feigned partiality and before/after pictorials
What does gender mean?
Basically: nothing
What does gender mean to us?
Unfortunately: everything

Zed Neutrinos

In the face of apathy
Tyrants yawn and turn to take a nap
In the face of apathy
Economies simmer and foster bread-crust revolutions
In the face of apathy
Tensions breed ill-fed rivalries
In the face of apathy
No one marks your race or ethnicity
In the face of apathy
Nothing's done, no ideals destroyed
In the face of apathy
We're all bursting with joy
And latent madness
In the face of apathy
All that can be set right
Is left in its place, its
proper dimension

They call us the generation of
Twitter; iPhone oracles who were
teethed with circuit-boards and
trending topics

I say envy bleeds more than green
When the ones doing the weaning
Nearly sputter over debt-ceilings
And point chewed nails past Nesquik fences
To their off-springs' empty nests

Well, good-bye boomers
Good-bye touch of gray
Good-bye ulterior motives
Good-bye to stunted, half-crippled
Chivalrous decay

Hoover Villa

I asked for cold, uncaring chaos
At a whim from the differential
They gave me agave nectar and brittle
Crackers sopped in whale-sperm
Like the carnage of Dunkirk
Spilled in drips across their faces
Pacific tidings drew a vial
On the doors in Earthen chalks
Blackberry stains in metric doses
Vile chanting in shapes untenable
For the shadow proclamation, demons swirl
Hellenization, a Greco-Roman fetish creed

This is the sin of birthers and boomers
Latin twists and mental snaps
Into the arbitrary ballet of contemporary
gore, your stolen planet bathed in linseed
Pine-sol curators mop chaffed elbows
Cocoa Butter in place of maddened shame
All Crimea, Black, Deadened seas
Scrolls up to the knee in historicity
Patterns abound in futures forever sealed
And the weal of the veld dissolves

I'm the king of hallowed hills
Hellish halls built in Grieg's image
And when Wagner stops his insane stroll
Through Weimar pustules, inflammatory jingoism
Each Aryan knee will bend in tune
A coda, a half-note, and a lukewarm spitoon
Ay, there was a promise once
No more preachers, no more justice
Coincidence brushed with a love for fate
We forgot the vows of holy writ
Grape extract distilled in little flasks
Pan's flute smashed, buried in bricks of hash
I see no more
and good for that
Sight's better for the blind
When the world's in boiling water

Death of Just Us

Damned fool, that boorish Dane
Who first said that to live was in the leaping
Cruel, jesting faces glued to the linings of sheet-rock
I spill out of walls, intangibly repressed
Fear and trembling, love and loathing
Warbler's tune holds the siren's throne
Past my tragus, inner-ear folds
Sinner's call of condemnation
He shrieks through bitter weeps
That all the fruits we held:
Impassioned labor and the bourgeois need for blood-sport
Tumbled down in crystalline nodes
Fanciful concepts, cast-iron Chimeras

It's always silent in the library
I squint towards the mystifying dome
Offices abandoned in the heat
Moldy tomes strewn about
Like so much rubbish in the
fissures between ourselves

Davis slipped through
While we clutched at granules
of flax-seed faith, Uncle Sam's stock
of Vitamin B, and never again
will there be deficiency
Inject our serum on our soil and
You'll live forever

Georgia kept its word

Unthank

Bound by the shell-shocked, damnation raving decay
Frostbitten teeth gnawing on lantern handles
Starving for the kerosene within, serrated eyelids glued
To screens, the ebb and tide of answers momentarily glimpsed
Ideal forms cast shadow images on cave walls
We shuffle through snapshots of grinning infants
Whose backs break under the weight of olympus, and
retreat into the falsehood of unconditional purpose
You don't matter more than what I can use you for
And past that you're a husk to throw away or side-step
Litter; ephemera minutely ticking away at my conscience
floaters with ribs poking through sheet-thin skin
Images of consonants, a primer for my somnolence
To help me doze, rising to baffled brows and
inkwells shattered across dormitory hallways
Each decrepit toe paths back and fro, hurt egos
show, enraged eyes glowing with the sane madness
of our present day, hurtling to god knows where
He might not even, if he exists, that is
to say that my being could be all that persists
my only assurance is rising from sleepless fits
surmising theories on lifelong punishments
that often end before they really begin

I sit silently in rooms of twine
dead eye stare while I learn about important dead men
in buildings named after less important dead men
all the time I only think
that one day I'll die as well
and I'm not even sure how to do it yet

No uncertain terms

Which truth holds the kernel
Dewy-eyed philosophers gibe
Semantic brawls through alleyways of thought
Induct the meaning of is
when only the past defines us
Limmericks bred of spittle
thick-rimmed, black lacquered spectacles
A sight for reborn eyes, a burning bush waving
Crimson streaks mark rivulets
From drawing rooms, smoking chairs
billowing anathema, Churchill stalks the halls
Forgotten fields, razed crops, sheets of linen
But everything is relative, so I tug at
the tendrils of binding, sprawled across
300 million minds, self regard and jars of camphor
Crane my neck over miles of cloudless sky
Where peaks burrow into lint-filled pockets
and limitless ability is whetted by reality
Drapes mask the enigma of man
Persian carpets conceal the wicked abandon
the distance of meaning, gulfs of nothingness
I am a hole waiting for absolution
and the non-existent plug

The Revolted Man

I am the minute deception of days
I am the smoking gun
I am the was, will, and want
I am the acid flush of desire
I am the plaguing empire
I am vitriol; psychotic sludge
I am the snake's head flared
Blake's great red dragon rears a flame
So as to say to Saint-Just
and the divine right of Kings:
'We are the reign of terror,
sleep for the dead, and acrid
sweeps for all the weeks,
will flourish to the tomb.'

First

The best wife can make a throne of tattered linen and royalty of a drunkard. Hibba Amoud knew this, and yet staring at her snoring, whimpering husband, she could do nothing but strain in the unrealistic alchemy of swapping a smudge for sheen.

Even well past dawn, when the smells of a village collectively releasing pent-up gas and brewing ink-black coffee laid thick upon the wafer walls of her house, Hibba stared in vain.

Beneath his scowling, chapped lips and wispy beard, Yousif Amoud was nearly all belly, scrapping about with legs fit to buckle under the weight of one more errant slice of bread. His head was peaceful in sleep, washed clean of dreams by muscle relaxers he'd hustled from the local doctor. Regardless of how empty his mind was in (or out) of sleep, Yousif's body saw fit to enact a reign of terror on the Amoud's sole two rooms. Twig legs thundered out like a horse fearing the lash, arms coarse and hair-matted spun like those of a swimmer who just took a bump on the head, and Yousif's sinuses performed the nightly ritual of revenging years of jealousy on the neighbors and keeping them up past midnight.

“I could choke him,” thought Hibba, toying with the fabric of her dress and dwelling on plans made more viable through lack of sleep. She quickly abandoned her regular thoughts of homicide and got up to make coffee.

If there was anything more vile to Hibba than watching her husband sleep (she suspected there wasn't), it could still be remedied by a morning sipping cheap Nescafe and basking in the Lebanese sun for a few hours, if not minutes. Though it's said that the key to a husband's heart is his stomach, the assurance of a wife's sanity can surely be found in coffee grounds.

The unbroken thread of silence awarded by sitting on a neon-pink plastic chair scrunched in the corner of a porch watching folk pass by was actually filled with sounds. This din, however, was a balm whereas Yousif's cacophony was maddening. Occasionally tooth-less old men shuffled by with brows beaten by toil and still managed a wave, while their youthful counterparts danced and charged each other in naïve facsimiles of war.

Behind the chipped door, haunting reminders of her husband's nightly thrashing echoed.

“Let him crash,” Hibba said into the endless pit of her mug. It wasn't hate that kept her up, though her thoughts made it seem that way. It was more of an extended annoyance, as if her husband was a child in the midst of arrested development, incapable of maturing yet too old to be coddled.

Halfway through her first mug of coffee, however, her morning ritual of near-obsessive thoughts regarding Yousif was invaded by a high-pitched call, almost a warbling. It could only be her neighbor Hayma coming from her door, boorish and pestering where she thought herself sociable and inviting.

“Who's that over there?” Hayma called before she came into sight, “Hibba? By god, I need some coffee.” Hayma was testament that no matter how irritating the wife, at some base level a snoring husband was to blame.

“Come up, I have another mug set out already,” said Hibba, suddenly aware of her unconscious act of premeditated courtesy. She was quick to feign interest in Hayma's day-to-day activities, and whether or not she noticed the vapid affirmatives Hibba invariably replied with, Hayma blustered on, revealing more than what was proper.

When the only object one can give is courtesy, often the only punishment one can inflict is withholding it. In that way, many of the villagers living in Arab Saleem acted as saints, hoarding the hopes of one day shunning their neighbors and revenging slights to their honor.

That they rarely got this opportunity didn't enter into their judgments, and the villagers led well-mannered lives purely by way of miscalculation.

Fuga Mortis

This is the documentation of a mad man; such as it may be, prose in the form of invariably dextrous poetry that quickly bends the knee to feigned night-time visions of a higher calling. Rhythm as non-rhythm, and the fearful procession of words into spiritual legislation accompanied by the frenzied clacking of beardless man-children avoiding social interactions via the very same outlets that have formed for them a dependency. What could be mangled by run-on fortitude was nixed by the logical extermination that preceded its existence, and the world as will and representation presented the subjective with a categorical imperative to cease and desist all fearful functioning.

Pompous pubescent pillagers of responsibility hinder the sanctity of my LCD screens with 4 by 4 cut-outs of nights spent languishing in the delirious scenes of party schemes. While paltry seems the bitterness of the lone witness, in truth the rotten core that resides in his center of balance is dissatisfaction at an inability to grasp an internal truth; that morbidity and banality have rendered him incapable of conveying artistic integrity.

Everywhere the various tentacles of stimulation beckon and hearken with the babel allure of knowing something of everything and nothing thoroughly. It can be considered a venereal disease of our collected mentalities that pervasive in our culture is a sense of entitlement and a widespread whining about our lack of pruning. Take up the mantle for yourselves and these obstacles would prove nothing more than chimeras, whereas now they appear solid at a distance and your resolve purees in the juice of diffidence.

This is an interlude between paragraphs to remind the reader that Woody Allen's movies always feature a man betrayed by some haughty female, and that the correlation between Sir Allen's monstrous personal life and his archetypal fear of powerful Venuses is no coincidence but rather completely causal.

I've relapsed quickly and almost immediately, both literally in the sense of absorbing cup after cup of maple redolence and coffee beans, and methodically, relying on the effervescent effect of aurally rhymed 'e's and other schemes to facilitate the now scant blithering of pages colonoscopy.

Permanent mental impairment rings loudly yet the heart boasts proudly, fixating my psychology on the terminology of cognitive dissonance. No longer thrust between the primal rock and hard place, we lace the excitement of our times in a border of nicotine packaging and caffeine-based epistemology. Maybe Freud had a thing for his mother, and subsequently the putative passing of man has been a tale of sneaking peeks at maternal shower scenes and plugging lacy undergarments with spilled seed.

Onan's sin is mine alone, yet the will-to-live belongs to all. We share our disgraces, our times of glory, each hard-won triumph, and acrimonious defeat, just as we share the ennui of intermittent weeks. Death, then, is not a passing into nonexistence, but rather a rebounding into the holistic presence of shared reminiscences that constitutes the analogous aeons before birth.

Let us return to the womb of time with the glint of our inner-beings, so that we may be thrust across the Universe in sparking metals and elements unbound. Save your faith and theology, our breath is better spent inhaling virtuous art and exhaling our own truths into the spittoon of yarn-woven delusions.

Neptune Bilgewater

This is known as the leap before the windmill, wherein dusty tunes and warbled rhymes skitter prettily from virgin throats ululating, crashing towards the grassy knoll. Never enough, yet barely inching towards the satisfaction of fulfilled lust. Crescent pills and half-moon powders line flushed nostrils while rheumy eyes weep nectar. That playground love shuttles bullets belatedly into cocooned brains lacks the surprise of the first shattered hymen.

This is known as war in place of truth, wherein battered shields and shattered city spirits illuminate the glossy intentions of labor-backed class infiltrators. Smeared berry face-paint marks tribal mask unities and loyalties to local chiefs, particularly the likes of Gompers, JP, and burly Tweed. This just in: journeymen and artisans revolt against the government, driven by poor nourishment and a feeling of civil abandonment. Headlines spread like buttered jam on toast too thin to swallow without gin.

This is known as stage left, wherein the only possible exit is a body-bag and hastily scribbled directions in Latin. Past the juicing of our efforts and the usefulness of our faith, Christ the magician followed the demarcation exeunt with a mummer's fervor. Shuffle off to Nicaraguan soil, embroiled in the corruption of Reagan-time Rocky smacks and Old Glory-emblazoned shorts stitched into being by brown skins.

This is known as parallelism, wherein silken sheeted shadow shows depict political misdealing and heavy-handed jingoism under the guise of fatuous animation. Stark corruption careens into the annals of comedy when bellowed from within the patina-pocked throats of crooning robots. Who can operate under the standard human rights act when the black-lacquered lingerie catalog creeps into congressional paws and beckons howls toward the blood-curdled moon?

This is known as banality, wherein we stomp from street-corner to peddle-station with able-bodied citizens pelting rations of amphetamines along the divine portcullis. Jesus be thy name but we bend the knee so quickly upon hearing the ring and clink of opaline studded coffining. Arms crossed in salutation to the Tower of Babel, wind-swept culture death defines the albums and provisions of military decisions.

This is known as inbred assurance, wherein purity remains color-free and minorities descend readily into infighting in the face of white-bred pejoratives. The N word is only a weapon in their hands, yet the claws of brethren mark cheeks once kissed warmly. Simple sentences and collegiate imperatives, declaratives, and sweepingly vacuous details of impoverishment shown through this Jacob Riis lens haunt my dreams in steadfastness.

This is known as wormwood's clause, wherein brittle bits of mettle-tested kindred spirits are mended through the commercially acclaimed healing effects of screw-tape. Each chunk of text reprints itself endlessly, a merciless, inexorable gratification committee patched up merely to regulate and up the intake of tax payer greenbacks.

This is known as finality, wherein the charred remains of scripture and elusive, alliterative allusions to confusing fusions of prime-time literature and midway mangled mass-produced mainstream television are sewn as one to better transition to the last period of punctuation, a penultimate hope that the assuaged mind reaches catharsis and a sense of enlightenment at having formally met the ending scrawl.

Listen, here. Listen, hear.

Can magic and meaning coexist? That lingers long on the mind when watching the dust settle between the shoulders of reluctant viewers, nebulae in collision all the same. Making little of madness requires great effort, so rather than strain I exhale, hear the click-and-roll of industrial projectors, and allow the cool sluggishness of my expectations to encapsulate the experience.

But were it for a lack of phone or a misplaced signal, I would not be here. Were it for a mid-road collision, an offday, or a home game, the same applies. Though none of that occurred, and with buttocks in seat I watch. And watch as a life becomes unraveled for experimentation, curiosity mingled with the occasional visit to unprecedented violence. Youth becoming man, man remembering youth, and all the bittersweet happenings smudged in twine that cement the conditioning of one to the idea of death.

Troubling bits of life displayed. Stolen undergarments and jaws rubbed to the callous by frustrated, wrinkled hands. Coughing elderly women, coffee the scent of French fields, punctuated by a Kodak slide-reel of grey terrain, clicking with quarter-notes to the beat of a tone-deaf whistler. Our feet pump city streets almost effortlessly, yet if we could float we would seek the end of all need. Sunrise in the Antarctic. Images of blasted lands, and a single Cello yawns with the silent ferocity of spirited wind.

There's something oddly comforting about sharing darkness with others. It's as if I rolled into a blanket and found strangers waiting inside, but without the awkward bumping and feeling that would normally accompany such a gesture. Ignoring the synchronized snot-rumbling, and barring the unnecessary chittering, phone-checking, and teeth clacking, the darkness is a communal sector for spiritual ease to be attained. I'd share it with you anytime, in fact we have, and it didn't strike me at the time but keeping the black to ourselves meant much more than I cared to know.

At a certain point, somewhere between critical exhaustion and the failure to achieve nirvana, I threw my hands up and expelled weakness. Strength became a credo, better yet, a necessity. But even at that point, strength couldn't heal, reveal, unwind, and make short wind of the stress that plagues us all. Strength can be the best rallying point, but it is surely the worst camp. Strength will never be a home, if only because a home requires a hearth, warmth, surety of grace, and the crinkles that cap off grins.

It is just as well, for linoleum doesn't make a home either. No, more than brick, mortar, sweat, labor, or a hefty contracting job, a home builds itself, supported by the backs of those within it. A gesture one remembers, a picture taken in the backyard, tears shed on carpet flooring, a stain to mark zealous coffee consumption; these are all photographs in time, and seconds flung off the hands of the clock upon which our memory's eye feasts.

Days of struggle are behind and promptly in front, with the resolute residing soundly betwixt. The middle makes all, and the fortitude, willpower, and tenacity of those who push through the failures of the past and stride onward into a halcyon future are all founded on a fondness for the present. Feel the walls you think might be crushing you. Sniff the breeze that could carry a sickness. Breath in one's lungs and feet on the ground are so beautiful it's heart-crushing to think of a time when we could be without one or the other. Mentality bridges our bodies to a world of all-forgiving light, and the bulb hearkens unerringly.

The Hempire Strikes Back

Sitting idly in the cradle of brimstone fires and mushroom cloud philosophies, I wonder, what could really be the purpose of this sickly green herb that inflames and tames. Flung across several galaxies via THC, the only divinity I seek gets wrapped in sleek packaging in the pursuit of inhaling ease. See, humor is a tumor, and comedy is a disease that I hoped to excise with a scalpel in self-inflicted surgery, the result being a twisted, hemorrhaged frontal cortex and a chuckle for the breeze that cracks through my teeth, setting my brow tersely.

At times all we wish to do is bellow earnest apologies from church pews and cling to Christ's feet as he ascends to totality, waking up to find that the grime still lounges lazily and the haze you thought you'd be escaping is only increasing in the taking. Though stricken with the curse of Cain and the venom of forced rhyming schemes, religion continues to creep inside my dreams, reflected in my subconscious projections, the hypnagogic imagery of Buddha, Krishna, and Sumerian deities.

Spidery tendrils of smoke wrapped around the idols I worship. Toes kneaded in prayer, rocking back and forth, sweat cascading down my nose and a neck chaffed by clanging jewels. Like pearls before swine, I reject the commonplace happiness set forth by providence and seek evidence of a higher form of existence to no avail. A confusing time for puzzled men, when the amount of technology in our possession almost makes the search for truth appear to be a shadowy punchline, the joke being that God really has been dead, and the man with the mustache exorcised his grace neatly.

I was once convinced in archaic beliefs. It was a burden of the mind, so I struck them down with the stroke of a pen, and after hours of intense soul-searching emerged from my gilded perch anew, the product of 21st century Atheism, hopeless and derided by everything yet now knowing truly nothing. False knowledge reeks of ignorance, yet ignorance at times reminds of humility, while the only quality I harbor is superciliousness, ah yes, ignorance truly is bliss.

No qualities in a man can be accurately displayed over a web-page and given to the public in bite-sized quantities for simple mental transitioning. In a room, quietly and without practiced ease, he leans over the painting of some shoddy horse and wipes dust till the end of his days. A rather lovely thing at once becomes a sickening sight, as brain and carefree, fey personalities drip over chairs-of-twine and time clicks forward unceasingly.

Yet those who would claim that an herb can annihilate entire cultures still sip heartily on the rotted fruits of their ancestors. Keep preventing wisdom from washing on your shores and the only result will be an early grave bedded by forgotten memories and the bitter tears of a breathalyzer. Wisdom is the conjugate of prayer, whether it be in meditation, on the bottom of an ashen bowl, or in supplication to some higher being. There is no wisdom in restraint unless said restraint is in the pursuit of said higher being. Austerity for austerity's sake can only end in mounds of hair pulled and an explosion of animal ferocity the likes of which humankind only witnesses in century-spanning intervals.

Sympathy for the revel

There are two paths through life; the way of murder and the way of distaste. Perched atop my throne of calcified limbs and dapper grins, I mangle mango-rinds and toss fiber-filled skins to the gripping palms of sweat-caked peasants lingering below hungrily. From the point of view of an insect, all is magnificent and splendid, but appreciation is wasted on antennae. For man, each megalith is barely satiable, and with each achievement comes a rekindled desire to create more and to stoke the flames of our synapses.

If one wishes to conquer the accomplishments of another, the only possible choice is murder, and if not murder, then the walkway of guilt, lined with the distasteful memories of various failings. To inherit our fathers' skills we must devour them whole like titans and digest their minds. That the entirety of human history has been a tale of consumption is clear, but just where to apply that hunger has become the issue of contention splitting apart men, mushy sinew under the influence of blunt chemical reactions.

But past the grit of pears left on the ground in smatterings of saliva, John's truth remains untested and the Word that was God has become gibberish, only legible to those who sprint at walls with skulls alight, and the passion to recognize that oftentimes comatose states are preferable. A leap of faith is nothing more than a sacrifice of the soul to some greater entity, and if the self-sacrificial party is convinced enough in his savior, than that figure will appear to them upon leaping, unless they survive said leap, in which case the chance-return to regularity will be regarded as a “miracle,” and the surety of the eunuch will be cemented by pure probability.

Even when given a proper education and a list of the typical fallacies faced by man, we choose to go the spiritual route, as if by some preternatural knowledge that past the lines of type etched into pages of linen, and further than the symbolism indelibly seared into our senses of self, there exists a bridge into the ethereal, which has become a fact so deeply ingrained into our consciousness that we silently revere yogis and the art of meditation, allowing it to trickle into the divinity of western culture via the beatniks and poetic movements of the 1960's.

Yet, regardless of our simultaneous passion for inclusion and seeming need to be isolationist, there is a Puritan desire to intoxicate the rebels of our nation with drugs and the sooty underbelly of legal divisiveness. It is with the judge's gavel that we chase away pesky differences and attempt to extricate any frightening elements of a culture, boldly waving our whitewash brush and offering any immigrant the opportunity to succeed (given a hefty caveat). Appearing as children in painted faces, we hoot and holler like savages, making games to entertain, and once in our clutches, we yank their hair and spit tobacco in their eyes until they agree to jaunt by our rules and work in our mills. It is said that children know no bigotry, but it is with absolute prejudice that we train our children, socializing their once bright eyes with the dim, flinty anathema of promised democracy and social mobility.

We are criminals and crooks, but of the off-touch moral persuasion that we are somehow saints. If it were at all possible to be both a clergymen and an undertaker at once, and in fact to operate the entirety of the morgue in league with the butcher's slicer, then we would be truly just, and the circular nature of our roles in the city would be understood. For now, however, we remain shadows of the dust, memories long forgotten by moral men but basking in the insanity of lesser men, biding our time until some chance wind or accidental blow shuttles us back into the hearts of humanity and breeds the chaos necessary for our birth burial.

Albatross

Sun becomes light, light becomes man, man becomes father, father becomes son, and son becomes the universe in an awe-inspiring display of fecal repetition. Although youth is wasted on the young, true youth merely resides in the mind and the mentality of the old rots with each passing year. So much written but nothing said.

My computer contracted an STD while roaming freely in the netsphere of scrolling bits of iconography. So it's with impersonal humility and a taste for the finer things that I cast this feeble piece of machinery into the past history occupied by crushed masses of Atari and photocopied DVDs of the director's cut of Weekend at Bernies.

Though I'm not the man to pray, or to count on in times of worship, I'd easily take up the mantle of leading the imperium of man, if only to fail miserably and be cast into a cycle of aeon-spanning stone ages. Allow me to be the Otto Von Bismarck of our unified industrial Germany and infest the social ideology with striking images of the clergy crucifying innocent citizens in effigy while Walt Disney ingests LSD and burns candles of endangered whale meat.

During graduation my only two thoughts to spend kept returning to the contents of my stomach and how soon I could revert into my bed, in retrospect it was the best method of burning through a ceremony of mutual disgust and wonderment at our prosperous ability to engage in unnecessary pomp and circumstance. Born a day man I engendered bitterness and calloused my soul until emerging as a night owl to hoot at wanderers passersby and shriek at mice that scuttle nigh.

Legacies clicking away with the opportune tune of boisterous keyboards. Though in time the effects of the rhyme are diminished, we live in a land of perpetual Christmas, where the calendar sways and sheds days with the practiced ease of preset special effect companies. Insofar as I can see the level of mediocrity present in techno-mixes of rat-pack classics remains standard.

Excuse the presence of sarcasm in my voice as I tip my hat to your antiquated traditions. The road to perdition is paved with the skulls of Jude Law leering and sneering heartily at cheaply tended mustaches. In time he can come to accept that not all facial hair bearings are of great extent or magnitude, but in the meantime it suffices his sense of humor to see sickly goatees and patches of follicles barely sprouting sustenance for the aftershave paddies in which to wallow.

Let's take a moment to pray for the high-pitched Mediterranean bastard hocking silken songs written by small children and rubbing himself under the light of the ancient moon, tending to crops of olive, rose-water, and grain in an effort to sustain a family and whip into shape every deceased sack of disease on the filthy aramaic streets.

An ode to joy can only end in the decapitation of every choir member before slamming down bits of PEZ into their necks and calling it a night before the beginning of the concert. To be sure, we'd sear their corpses immediately and donate the ashes medically.