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