The second poem of Bactroid.net’s Poetry Week is now up. In fact, in honor of Poetry Week, here’s a Pokémon haiku:
Furry Pikachu
bends to drink from a puddle.
The grass grows slowly.
And, yes, I did make that up.
Not long after I started working the evening shift, Eric, the swell guy who was training me, started taking a poetry class. He showed me his first assignment, and I figured that I would give a shot just to see what I could come up with. The last word of each line was set by the teacher, and each line could only contain 8-12 syllables. In addition, I had to use two “painter’s colors” and a metaphor from the field of jurisprudence. I was quite pleased with the results honestly.
My thoughts are a dammed-up river.
Not persuaded by my cognitive IOU,
they churn and whirl and struggle their way over
in shades of ivory and mackerel-blue.
For what seems eternity, the distant thunder
of thoughts unheard or ignored by mental armor
has passed its quiet judgment of my guilt under
pretense of divine authority. A farmer
feels the coming dawn though his bedroom curtain
might block the morning light; likewise, dissonant noise
of forgotten dreams with no hope of translation
in half-parsed attempts must still pierce the graphite haze.
There’s no excuse for what I’ve become. I’m fast
approaching nothing with an engraved
invitation to nowhere. I’ve already lost
my messianic voice, and I mourn like Ovid
exiled on Tomi’s barbarous shore,
thinking only in could-have-beens and suddenly
seeing the world as though blinded by a sun-glare
on the Damascus road in search of constancy.
This article kicks off Poetry Week here at Bactroid.net. I’ve got a significant backlog of poems that I want to add to the Creative Writing section, and now seemed as good a time as any. Every day this week I’ll be posting a poem from my Creative Writing directory. If you like poems that border on goth/emo, be sure to check out the site every day. This little poem is one that I consider to be kind of a footnote or epilogue to “Happily Ever After”.
Rome wasn’t built in a day,
but that’s how it fell.
Kingdoms can fall,
and love can die.
Sometimes I dream in purple—
nightmares of soft arms and fabric
in dim light.
Other times I dream of
blue eyes, soft lips,
laughter that sang,
and words I never said
(i love you).
I sing my dark harmony in the symphony of pain,
and everyday I wake up to the nightmare of existence.
I wake up to nothing.
I just wrote this, and I just read it out loud to Allyson. She summed my reading up by saying that she didn’t know whether she should like it or not. This made me happy because that’s exactly how I felt when I wrote it. I’m not sure what else I can tell you about it because after pouring my soul into writing it and pouring my heart into reading it aloud I don’t have a whole lot more to give.
I’ve been here before.
It honestly comes as no surprise because, really, I’ll be here again. I seem to be trapped in some kind of endless loop,
hugging myself in a nearly empty club at 1:55,
swaying in time to music
with only the shadows to dance with
and nothing but emptiness to hold me.
I’ve come this close to understanding the universe so many times before that I lost count, started counting again, and then lost track all over again.
I come this close, and then I never take that next step because there’s always too much holding me back.
I’ve got a core set of beliefs that mean more to me than the truths they might contain. I enjoy the illusion, and I’m content with suspending my disbelief instead of watching the allegory and maybe glimpsing the theme instead of the sentences.
I formulate sentences like this in my head.
I’ll write a thousand shitty poems about it. You’ll read one or two. A particularly well-phrased sentence or well-articulated image will touch some aspect of your heart because you’ll see a thread from your own experience winding through it, and you’ll walk away feeling like we connected until you cheer up and think about bills and a mortgage and baby showers.
But we didn’t. You’re dancing and swaying with the illusion. After all, you’ve been there at 1:55 on a Saturday night too. And like me, you leave fundamentally unchanged for whatever your reasons and whatever your beliefs. I always get the ham sandwich at this deli, and my shoes are well-polished. How fascinating!
The music has something behind it. The rhythm is something unspeakable, ineffable—like the voice of God or the Devil or arbitrary supernatural meaning yielding the end result of glimpsing the karmatic and apocolyptic truth.
But it makes you want to dance. It makes you want to just turn off conscious thought and just become a blank void for a while.
But you’re incapable of that, aren’t you? There’s no shame in it. I can’t either. I’m always writing the next poem and composing letters to you with my mind.
Honestly, who wants wings? Sooner or later, I’ll wake from here and discover that I was just dreaming about God with the radio on.
What if we’re all wrong? What if the illusion is just comforting? Who wants to go home at two with someone else when you can go like you came—perfectly alone. That’s beautifully symmetrical after all. We’ve been naturally selected for symmetry.
This isn’t even poetry, is it? It’s that last swaying shadowy lonely dance where Morrissey is singing your soul and you wish that just once by God you could explain what’s wrong with you in ways that other people would understand. Just once you wish you could tell everyone that their beauty is often just too much to look at. Just once you wish you could tell how much you love them without resorting to the incongruous tears.
No, I’m not drunk. I’ve never been drunk in my life. In fact, I don’t remember the last time I drank anything alcoholic. I’m full of the Holy Spirit. Can’t you see all this? Can’t you see that it’s all profoundly beautiful and terrible? Doesn’t it make you tremble that you sully it all everyday with your very touch? My imperfections stand out like that lonely soul dancing out there alone on the corner of the dance floor who’s pretending not to notice that it’s almost two.
It’s all broken. It’s broken by the metaphor itself.
I just wish I could tell you. God, I wish I could tell myself. I wish I could just let go. I wish I could be half as punk rock as I pretend. I wish I could stay forever lost in this rhythmic Gothic moment. If I could freeze that moment before renaissance, I would apparently. After all, isn’t that why I continue playing this same role over and over for my own amusement? If I’m starring in the tragedy, what is my fatal flaw that leads to the downfall of everyone around me?
This narrative isn’t me. It never has been. The house lights are up now, and the moment is broken. I’ve lost the thought again because I just didn’t want to keep it.
I originally wrote this short parody piece for my college freshman composition course. The exercise involved writing the first several pages of a short story changing the setting. I’m pretty sure that this exercise was supposed to teach us how important the setting is to a short story as a whole. I, however, learned that it’s incredible fun to make fun of classic works of literature.
Day had broken many hours ago. This day was hot, hazy, and humid. The sun hung directly overhead as it was nearly noon. The man wandered the streets of the urban wasteland that is Miami, Florida. He had been walking for days along the dirty streets of this less-than-beautiful city with his canine companion. He noticed an alley that seemed to head in the general direction of South Beach. It was narrow and foul-smelling.
He took a look back at the way he had traveled. Dirt lay hidden under many feet of concrete. On top of that concrete sprouted buildings and a thousand other things. Cars streaked past on the side stretch of road. All along the sidewalks, hypodermic needles were strewn about. Empty cups from local fast food chains littered the concrete.
He was new here in Miami, a “tourist”. The climate here was almost tropical. It was nearly one-hundred degrees. With the humidity, it seemed as though it were close to 120 degrees. Of course, this meant nothing to him. He merely pulled his heavy coat closed.
As he began to move onward, he cleared his throat and spat at the concrete sidewalk. It landed with a sizzle that surprised him. He spat once more; and once again, it landed with a sizzle. Spittle didn’t fry on the sidewalk at one-hundred. It must be above one-hundred—how much higher he didn’t know. However, the temperature didn’t matter. He was bound for the old beach house where the other fellows were waiting. They had called a taxi, but he took the roundabout way so he could truly experience Miami. He would make it to South Beach by six o’clock—just in time for supper on the beach. As for lunch, he pressed his gloved hand against the little bundle in his coat. It was also under his shirt, lying naked against his skin. It was the only way to keep the biscuits from drying out in the Miami sun. He imagined them sopped in bacon grease with a piece of fried bacon in the middle. He could almost hear his arteries hardening.
He headed straight into the forest of garbage cans and cardboard boxes. The alley floor was hard to follow. A garbage dumpster had tipped over and covered the concrete with nearly half a foot of refuse. He was happy that he didn’t have to try and make it through the alley with a heavy backpack. All he had on him was his lunch. He was surprised, however, at the heat. He had grown a beard for the trip, but it did nothing to absorb the pools of sweat that had developed on his face.
At the man’s heels trotted his dog, a big Alaskan Husky. It had thick gray fur that no doubt protected it from the oppressive Florida sun. The animal moved cautiously among the layers of garbage. Instinct told him that the man’s measurements were wrong. It was not one-hundred degrees. It wasn’t even 105. the dog didn’t know or care anything about thermometers. Possibly in its brain there was no perception of searing heat as there was in the man’s. However, it did understand instinct. The dog moved along at the man’s heels, expecting him to stop at a local restaurant to rest and enjoy the air conditioning. The dog had come to understand air conditioning, and it wanted air conditioning.
The dog panted heavily to cool himself. It didn’t have to sweat to cool itself, but the man certainly did. The sweat was pouring down the man’s face, and a drop or two would fall from the tip of the man’s nose every two or three steps. He was also chewing tobacco. He was so hot that he didn’t care about wiping his chin after he expelled the cancer juice. The amber spittle continued to fester on his chin and began to dry in the Florida sun. The result was a rather interesting mound of color on his bearded chin.
He figured that he was going about four miles and hour. At this rate, he would reach the stretch of road that led into South Beach by half past three. He decided that he would celebrate that event with the eating of lunch there.
The dog dropped back at his heels again, with its tail tucked under its body as the man climbed over a dumpster in his path. The man was not much of a thinker. A detailed analysis of his thoughts yields only two thoughts: he would eat lunch at the main road and reach the beach house at six. There was no one to speak to in this alley. He couldn’t have spoken to them if there had been. The wad of tobacco in his cheeks would have made intelligent speech nigh impossible. So he continued to chew on his cancer cud, deepening the disgusting color on his chin.
He now and again thought of how terribly warm it was. His cheeks and nose felt as though they were on fire. Every time he touched them, he felt a terrible stinging. His cheeks and nose were burned. He wished that he had remembered to put on sunscreen. It didn’t matter much, though. After all, what were burned cheeks? A bit painful, that was all; they were never serious.
He looked at the piece of broken glass in the alley. He had to be keenly aware of the shards of glass. One large piece could easily poke through his moccasins and puncture his skin. A cut on a piece of glass could definitely be dangerous. It would at least delay him while he dug out the glass and stopped the bleeding. He carefully stepped along until he had passed the glass. Then he resumed his pace.
During the next half hour, he encountered several broken beer bottles in the alleyway. At one point, he was unsure of how to proceed and sent the dog out ahead of him. It didn’t want to go so the man threw it forward. It made a few cautious steps until it steeped on a piece of broken glass. Almost immediately, it dropped down and began biting at the glass. It didn’t think about this. Instinct told it to dig out the glass or it would have painful traveling. The man removed his mitten and helped the dog remove the glass. It was less than a minute that he had the mitten off, but he could feel the heat radiating off the concrete, frying his hand like a piece of steak in a microwave. It certainly was hot. He swiftly pulled his mitten back on and felt the heat still on his hand.
At precisely half past three, he arrived at the main road. He was pleased to be on schedule. If he kept this speed up, he would certainly reach the beach house by six. He pulled out his lunch and sat in a ditch by the side of the road to eat. The biscuit had already turned hard. He chuckled at his foolishness. He had forgotten that the biscuit would get stiff from sitting. He needed to build a fire to warm the biscuit. His toes had already developed a burning sensation that alarmed him.
He quickly dipped his feet into the water that had collected in the ditch until they stopped burning. The old southerners were wrong. It wasn’t the humidity; it was the heat. He dug his matches out of his coat and proceeded to make a fire. He used the thick weeds to start his fire and slowly progressed to twigs from dead trees. Soon, he had a roaring fire. He used the fire to warm his biscuit. The dog backed away from the fire and gave the man an exasperated look.
The man probably never knew heat. The dog, however, knew. It knew that now was not the time of day for anyone to be walking about in the Florida heat. It knew that it was a time to sit in the comfort of air conditioning and curl up for a nap.
The man had obviously not thought of the location where he should build his fire. The dried grass had begun to catch fire around him. He cursed himself for allowing the fire to get this large. Putting out this fire would take some amount of time. He probably wouldn’t make it to South Beach until after dark. He turned to the water it the ditch and pulled out and old Coke bottle which was halfway-full. He dumped the water onto the fire and thought for a moment that he noticed a slight dying down of the fire. He ran back to the ditch and re-filled his bottle.
The dog recoiled from the ever-increasing wall of flame with a growl. Its tail drooped as it tried to increase the distance between it and the oppressive heat of the fire. Instinct told it that the temperature around that fire was definitely too hot.
The man rushed with his newly-filled bottle and dumped its contents into the fire. Just a few more bottles of water would surely put out the fire, but it was so hot. A current of heat blew in his direction and threw him to his knees. The last thing the man was aware of was the swirling oranges and yellows all around him. He curled up into a deep, satisfying sleep. The heat wasn’t all that bad. He just needed to take a little nap to clear his mind…
The dog caught the pungent smell of death on the wind and let loose a terrible howl that was swallowed up by the crackling of the fire. Then, the dog straightened up and headed back toward the restaurant they had passed where he could rest in the air conditioning and maybe get some food from some passers-by.
I originally wrote this poem not long after I had graduated from college and started working full-time. While this poem might not seem like much, it meant a lot to me because it was the first poem of any merit that I had been able to write since I started dating Allyson. Most of my poetry comes out of me feeling down and dark, and I haven’t really been in that space with any consistency since I’ve been with her. Sometimes I worry that this means that my poetry is that sappy teenager-in-love-and-filled-with-despair emo crap.
Merciful prayers for nothingness go unheard.
The pain is exquisite now,
and within veils there is the realization that there can be
nothing more than this shifting death.
The grey nightscape haunts what used to be real,
and you can’t help but ask yourself
an unending torrent of hyper-real answers
of long-dead philosophers.
You are unimportant now—
just as you have always been.
Your only life is the life you give others.
You have become—and always were—
nothing more than one big responsibility
to an invisible god in a host of myriad beings.
Your tears have never meant anything,
and you sold your soul long ago
for excuses with a side order of heartlessness.
Tears always fall in darkness.
Sometimes we just fool ourselves
into thinking that there is light.
I wrote this poem in my first college English course. I can’t remember exactly what the assignment entailed, but I’m pretty sure that it had something to do with imagery and meshing the sounds of words with the intent of the poem. In any event, this is one of my favorite poems that I’ve written.
The teacup was not pretty in the conventional sense,
but guests had often called it cute.
It was a creamy yellow color that gave it an almost
light-hearted feel.
On either side,
three little blue flowers
with tiny yellow centers bloomed.
It was not large as most teacups measure,
and it had a dainty handle
that compelled guests to take a sip of tea.
As I recall, it was a warm July day—
just right for the sipping of tea—
when the Lady of the House
accidentally threw the teacup
onto the adamantine floor.
With a sickening smash
the pieces of the teacup
scattered across the kitchen.
One by the refrigerator…
One by the stove…
One under the cabinet…
The Gentleman of the House immediately grabbed
the pieces and a tube of quick-bonding glue
and set out to repair the damage.
Some fragments of the teacup simply
disintegrated upon impact;
but after filling the cup with water several times and seeing no leaks,
the Gentleman of the House placed the teacup
back in the cupboard
and walked out of the room whistling
for the bright July day.
In the dark privacy of night,
a whisper of dejection—
of personal failure—
filtered through the house but
was hardly audible above the hiss
of the summer breeze caressing the eaves
of the house.
The Lady and Gentleman of the House
never stirred in their bright dreams
of kisses and hugs and smiles
to open their hearts and listen to
the sound of shattered hopes
in that trickle of tears
or the soft, mournful sobs
that might have obstructed their happy ending.
After all,
apologies and forgiveness
have no place
in the realm of tears and broken teacups.
Originally this was going to be the first chapter for a novel I wanted to write. As it stands now, this is the only chapter ever written, and I might as well just call it a stand-alone short story. The novel was to be called The Symphony of Misinterpretation, a title based on a bit of inspiration I had while walking around one day. The basic thought was that all of our mistakes and our false interpretations blend together to make the correct result. This thought was so powerful that I took a notebook out of my backpack and scrawled “We are all dancing to the Symphony of Misinterpretation.”
Jon was terrified. Of what he wasn’t really sure and maybe he was just too scared to even care what it was that he was scared of. This was his first night alone in his very own big boy room, and there was some unspeakable something in the darkness that made him afraid to even stir.
When he had first crawled into bed, tucked in by his Mama, he was so proud. Alone! In a big boy room with a big boy bed! He hadn’t even asked Mama to read him a story because he was so happy and content to be in his very own room with his very own things to keep him company. Bedtime didn’t seem nearly as bad when you weren’t sharing your room with your older sister. He hadn’t put up a fight when it was time for his bath. He had dutifully washed himself quickly and hadn’t even played “crash the tugboat”, a bath-time game that Mama wasn’t especially fond of. He pulled the plug out of the bottom of the tub all by himself (even though it still worried him a bit to hear the loud gurgle as the water sucked down the drain). He even put on the silly rabbit-covered pajamas that Mama had laid out even though he just knew that they were girl pajamas. At bedtime, he had said his prayers, being careful to take his time and say each word even though he really wanted to get done as fast as he could. He didn’t even make Mama kiss Herman because stuffed animals were for little boys and Jon was a big boy now.
But Jon didn’t feel very much like a big boy at this moment. Oh, when Mama had shut the door he was just fine. He could see the hall light and hear the soft whine of the television in the living room. He lay there happily thinking of a cartoon he watched earlier that day. He even giggled occasionally until Mama told him to stop cutting up and go to sleep. Jon didn’t feel tired, and so he sat in bed whispering his times tables to himself. One times one is one. One times two is two. One times three is three. One times four is four. Jon was very proud of himself for knowing his times tables because he knew that he would be starting kindergarten just three months from now, and his sister had told him that he had to be smart in school so he could make her and Mama proud. Herman had listened happily to Jon and was very proud of him. Herman was always proud of Jon. It didn’t matter to him that hadn’t quite mastered the two’s. After all, Herman knew they were hard. It didn’t matter to Herman that sometimes Jon had to use his fingers to keep track of what number he was on. It was easy to forget such things. Herman was proud of Jon no matter what happened. He loved Jon.
When the television shut off, Jon felt a little nervous. He knew that it meant Mama was going to bed soon. He heard the heavy weight of Mama’s footsteps move sleepily into the kitchen. He heard the water spout on the fridge shoot water out into a cup, and he heard Mama set the glass down and head to bed. The hall light went off not long after that, and Jon had been terrified ever since. Jon tried so hard to be a big boy. He tried to keep right on with his times tables, starting from the beginning.
One times one is one. Two times two is two.
He wanted so badly to just run to his Mama and tell her to please please stay up for just a little while longer. Why did he have to go to bed so early? Why couldn’t he stay up and watch TV? Why couldn’t he just turn on the TV and read? Why couldn’t he have homework like Kara so that he could work on something and have any reason at all to be up and turn on the TV? Why couldn’t he be up instead of laying here alone in this bed with the big window with the old curtain that Mama hadn’t pulled all the way?
But Jon knew that he couldn’t get up and cry to Mama. She wouldn’t understand anything, and Jon would have to go right back to sharing a room with Kara until he was a big enough boy to sleep all by himself. Jon knew that he couldn’t get up and turn the TV on because Mama would just take the TV away for a week. So Jon did the only thing he could. He threw covers over his head and put his back against the wall, clutching Herman tight in his arms and laying as still as he could.
Jon hadn’t moved since then, and though he really wanted to cry because he was so scared that he couldn’t think, he was afraid to make any noise at all because then they would know he was here and that he was awake. Oh God, if only they would think he was asleep. Then they wouldn’t bother him. But if they knew he was awake, then they’d come after him. He knew it. Jon’s butt hurt from being pressed against the wall so hard, but he couldn’t move it. His throat hurt from holding back tears and even the slightest sound. Jon heard his own breathing in the silence and even started holding his breath.
All Jon could think to do was pray. Jon was used to praying out loud before bed, but Grammy had always said that God could hear you even when you were just thinking real quiet to yourself. God please, Jon thought to himself, getting stuck at that point and not knowing what to say next. His heart just said it over and over again even as he bit down on his lips and refused to make a noise.
God please God please God please God please God please…
He remembered Grammy singing some song about the name of Jesus and how in the name of Jesus demons had to flee so he sat there praying the word “Jesus” over and over again, hoping that he wasn’t shaking enough for them to know that he wasn’t asleep. If he could only get to sleep everything would be okay. He would get out of bed in the morning and he wouldn’t die before he waked. He would get up, turn on the TV, and eat his cereal and everything would be okay. But he just had to get to sleep. But he couldn’t, and he couldn’t let them know that he was awake.
Jesus Jesus Jesus…
It was so hot under the covers that Jon couldn’t really breathe too well. Oh, how he wished that Mama hadn’t made him wear the long-sleeve rabbit pajamas. They felt like they were stuck to him and he really wanted to peel them off his back but he couldn’t because if he moved they would know he was still awake and they would have to get him.
Jesus Jesus Jesus…
Was he saying it out loud? He bit down on his lip even tighter to make sure that he wasn’t making any noise at all. Jon knew that he was squeezing Herman too tight, but he couldn’t loosen his grip because if he did they would see him move and they would know for sure that he wasn’t really asleep.
Jesus Jesus Jesus…
He heard a creak that came from the living room, and it made him pray even faster. JesusJesusJesusJesusJesus…They were in the living room. He knew it. He couldn’t move. They would know. They would know that he wasn’t asleep, and they would come after him. A silent tear rolled down his cheek and fell onto his quivering, tooth-pinched bottom lip. More than anything Jon wanted to be asleep and away from them.
JesusJesusJesusJesusJesusJesusJesusJesus…
This poem took me over four years to write, and I regard this as the single most important text I have written thus far. The poem has an odd sense of narrative—freely mixing the symbolic with the actual. Some portions of this poem still give me chills when I read them. I don’t expect everyone (or even most people) to “like” this poem, but I love it with a part of my heart that few of you will ever see.
Wait.
That’s simply not possible.
Ah, yes.
the synthesis of human thoughts
belching out a stream of incoherent idioms
Ah, yes.
the degrading nature of a pot roast
screaming in the wilderness for sanity
(a little thing we like to talk about with absolutely no relevance here)
I was a walking toddler
dancing to the tune of a million fairy freaks
looking inward and not outward
in the groove of vegetables and meat
FREAK!
INSATIABLE CAPACITY FOR IGNORANCE!
m o t i o n
in the region of your mouth
and not your brain. . .
LIZARD BOY!
COLD-BLOODED TURNIP!!!
Stick your finger up your nose
looking for the meaning of life
it’s not there. believe me; i’ve looked before.
understandbutnotunderstandohnonotthegrits!
flowers in bloom.
bees buzzing—
after all what else are they gonna do. . . TELL ME THAT, OH SACRED GURU
OF KNOWLEDGE—
around those self same flowers
staring for hours
at the pretty pollen
(Pretty pollen? Come here, pretty pollen.)
books
Ah, yes.
the books,
the universe’s information dump.
*YOU ARE HERE.*
Look in the fridge.
MAYBE THAT’S WHERE YOU LEFT YOUR LAST BRAIN CELL!
rEaLiTy is and is not just to the left of the moldy pot roast.
~GET THAT BLOODY FRIED CHICKEN OUT OF THE HOUSE!~
**NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
take your friend fried chicken out of the garbage and burn it in a
stinking black barrel along with the macaroni and cheese. maybe then
it will make sense.
Tata, Muffy. Lovely day on the tennis courts. Fetch me a drink, will
you?
Command that sounds like a request!
Spill the peanut bloody butter on his lap!
Yeah!
Yeah!
That’s what we’ll do.
Strike up the cheese grits band! I’m comin’ home for supper!
do you interface with the frequency i’m dismembering?
Ah, yes.
the sound of a goldfish
(in one of those ethereal blue-lighted aquariums)
drowning in the freak wave
happiness(???)
ha ha ha ha ha ha
endless tummy-gazing hours
blown apart in a nuclear atomic fission explosion
in one freaking phone call
Honesty is quite an interesting idea.
how am i supposed to know all this?
i’m still kind of new at all this.
cool and sweet . . .
refreshing introspective looks—
that’s all I have right now.
When I say cool,
i don’t mean the neo-Alternative meaning.
i mean kind of like a refrigerator
or a cool drink of water after walking into an air-conditioned house on
one of those scorching
it’s-not-the-heat-it’s-the-humidity
Florida (above one-hundred degrees on the Fahrenheit scale) summer
days that are infinite in both length and
intensity
half-awake
half asleep
state of semi-conscious omniscient immortality
felines flying into the sunset. . .
but you know that tape doesn’t stop playing there
CRUSH CRUSH SMASH YOUR PRETTY LITTLE EMOTIONS!
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
i think i’m broken and shattered in a million little pieces
Hmm.
this is the happy ending i’ve fought so hard for
well i’ll be.
This whole thing is retrograde
locked into one reality
Don’t you understand?
Thoughts. . .
images. . .
thoughts ARE images
and images are reality
kind of on a different frequency, though.
this all paves the Way for my
Greatest Fear:
i am only an image
a symbol.
This is all so pointless I think.
There are too many levels of reality.
i hereby break them all down
(I.e. There is only one reality.)
I turned to my left and right all at once
and asked the free-floating wad of protoplasm
what it thought about the new state of reality
and it said, “It is and isn’t Tuesday.”
i took this to heart and sprouted fungi
and flew out of the sunset
(stupid monkeys. . . why do they like classic Greek theatre?)
resting my feet for a while by walking around.
A couple of intelligent hamsters scurried through my torso,
complaining about the high tax rate.
it was then that i realized,
“My God. There’s no atmosphere.”
Realizing I shouldn’t be able to breathe,
i stopped immediately and four disgruntled tarantulas
flew out of my armpit.
While fading in and out of existence
with a friendly bucket of green peas,
a wheelbarrow pushed by William Carlos Williams
sunk past my brain
(incidentally, it wasn’t red. Being color blind, I can only guess
exactly what color it was.
But I am sure of this. . .
it was either
green
or grey!(i think))
Shakespeare was
vomiting out of a ditch, screaming something about trash
entertainment.
i’m here
i’m not
i’m here
i’m not
what does it matter anymore?
so i continued my lively conversation with the green peas until we met a
bucket of marbles
(steelies if you want to know! The kind that you find in the
bottoms of spray paint cans)
and the two had green paint balls for children
dismayed that the vegetable i believed was my friend had left me, I sold
my soul to a side order of chicken.
(Of course, that didn’t last long either. She wanted to be fried
instead of baked.)
i took a stroll through the produce section of the local video store
and caught a computer virus.
I sneezed out BASIC programs in my spare time while repeating the phrase
“puppy dog go home.”
i guess that lasted about three or four minutes.
I WAS CURED!!!
i wasn’t paranoid; but, quite frankly, I was tired of the government’s
attempts to watch me
(especially when I got in the shower or ate fungus)
so i went to speak with THE OMNISCIENT PILE OF SAWDUST
i said, “Hey, man. What’s shakin’?”
he kind of grunted and blew daisies in my face.
so much for that
i met a French nationalist that spoke Spanish with an English
accent. He picked up a gumball and quickly shoved it up his nostril
saying, “No puedo hacer más, señor.”
i took his gentle advice and paid to watch two children learn
arithmetic.
then i met my anti-person (made entirely of anti-particles) and shook
hands.
our hands erupted in a cloud of energy.
This set off a chain-reaction that stopped with a big
BANG
the monkey ran up to us—
even though we didn’t really exist (we actually fictionally existed on a
semi-conscious symbolic level)—
and said, “Darn it. It still is and isn’t Tuesday. I’m going
to miss Antigone.”
Taking my cue from an old 8-ball,
i aimed for the corner pocket
and headed down the street
for a little spin around my subconscious mind.
A little cartoon mouse scurried away
from a big cartoon cat,
bringing me memories of childhood.
A small car drove by with a driver that was dressed up as Death. He
honked the horn and waved as if I should know him from somewhere. He
swerved and pronounced the unfathomable to passers-by.
It was then that i stopped on the sidewalk and concentrated all of my
mental energy on moving parts of my anatomy that simply don’t exist.
I resumed my pace and walked into a nearby hospital for tea.
The doctor quickly prescribed my tea with lemon and sugar. (It was
actually quite good.) Sipping my tea in the Emergency room, a child
passed me with a swarm of doctors passing him. I started to follow but
didn’t want to get bogged down in that narrative.
The French nationalist, I noticed, was right behind me smiling and
whispering, “Es hermosa.”
The hospital disappeared
and I noticed that i had been waiting in long lines.
Who’s to say?
the slight taste of lemon was still hanging in my mouth as the
intelligent hamsters walked along the crowded interstate and discussed
the literary achievements of e.e. cummings.
I suddenly felt the desire to sing,
but the only song i could think of was “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
I heartily sang the first few lines;
and before long several small children had joined in the chorus with
beautiful smiles on their faces.
Being inclined to agree with the sentiments of the French nationalist, I
thought that this moment was indeed beautiful. At least until the old
drunk drove by in a big American car and smashed their little skulls on
the road. the old drunk stumbled out of the wreckage and put his hand
over his heart with a great thump. he began emphatically stuttering the
pledge of Allegiance. (i think it was at this point that America died.)
Several skinhead garbage men drove by to pick up the trash from the
affluent houses in the next city. Not that it had anything to do with
anything else; but, at the very least, anything didn’t care.
I heard the strains of free-form jazz and knew that at least our souls
were intact.
(i met my soul once. he was a rather nice fellow.)
i saw a pair of neon orange sneakers dangling from a nearby nowhere.
the smell was horrible so i quickly walked some more.
i passed
an old stinking bum
that had all but one of the files in his brain deleted
he just sat there
drooling all over himself.
I kicked him in the face
and said,
“How’s that for input?”
i felt saintly and quickly named a church after myself.
an old priest came up to me and talked in Latin; but, to be honest, I
didn’t really (or fictionally) understand him.
it wasn’t long (even though time is really and fictionally subjectively
relative) before I found myself swimming in an ocean of beautiful women.
the odd thing was
i didn’t really care anymore.
I think it was beaten out of me.
I received a call on my portable telegraph that brought news of
jubilation mingled with intense personal pain.
(to be honest, the whole thing blew me completely off-center.)
i sat for a while in the midst of nothingness contemplating what to
say in reply
then nothing at all struck me, and I decided to leave the whole thing
alone.
the intelligent hamsters wandered by, discussing the more radical
aspects of the Great Enlightenment.
Rounding the corner,
I shifted reality into neutral
and coasted straight past a line
of people withdrawing money from the bank and then eating it.
Some fried it in butter
or grease,
but the health-conscious
preferred to eat it with a Fat-Free Bleu Cheese Dressing.
i wanted someone to walk up to me and tell me what a jerk i was, but it
simply didn’t happen.
okay.
so i’m walking along.
all the sudden, i see this girl sitting by the side of the road.
seemed pretty despondent to me. . .
on the verge of tears.
so i stopped and gave her a hand. i said,
“Excuse me, Miss. Can I help you up?”
She agreed and i lent her my hand.
we walked along for a while discussing our common interests.
(i wanted to hold her hand and kiss her)
this lasted for a little while.
then she went along her way
everyone is so much cooler than me.
I screamed out after her.
“DON’T YOU UNDERSTAND!!!! I LIKE YOU FOR WHO YOU ARE!!!”
but it was more like a soliloquy.
after all,
no one really cared to hear it.
Well, at least I still had my sainthood.
While I was sitting in my newly-rediscovered solitude, I noticed the
French Nationalist off in the distance.
“How are you?!?” I shouted.
his reply was somewhat garbled, but I could clearly hear him say, “Es
hermosa.”
I wandered into a local supermarket, looking for a loaf of bread.
masses and masses and masses of the poor indoctrinated. . .
the poor soul that checked me out talked on reflex without
comprehending.
How are you doing today?
Actually, kid, I’ve had a heck of a day.
Well, that’s good. It sure is pretty outside today.
I hate the hot weather.
Well, I can certainly understand that. . . One, twenty-nine. . . Okay. .
. Out of Twenty?
Eighteen, seventy-one is your change. You have a good evening.
I smacked him in the face really hard with a copy of 1984.
He kind of blinked, and I saw a new awareness in his eyes. He walked
straight out the door with me.
How many aren’t so lucky?
I walked into a green pasture and began eating grass. i found it very
fulfilling. but reality sent me back.
Herds of people
milling past me in the
slate-grey city-scape.
I reached out to touch
one of them
(because i was a bit lonely)
Immediately he turned into a pile of dung.
I stopped a young woman passing by
with a directness i had just inherited from my ordeals.
She also turned into dung.
By this time, I was feeling like King Midas.
I sat down on the pavement and pondered the value of the non-existent
emotionless.
The girl from the side of the road walked up behind me and rested a hand
on my shoulder comfortingly.
Tears of joy flooded my soul.
This was a moment that bisected a thousand other moments that only
happened somewhere in my brain. . .
I love you. . .
Would it be a good thing if I were to ask to hold your hand?
But in the end we sat there in honest silence.
As she turned to walk away,
someone died deep inside; and
she didn’t even know—
or if she did,
she didn’t acknowledge it.
The complex system crash of raw infernal emotion
made me touch a hand to my cheek
to wipe away a bloody tear.
Have a cappuccino.
I turned down University Avenue at the yellow light
with my watch clearly saying, “A quarter past eternity, mate.”
There just down from the taco place
I saw Jesus helping a drunk stagger into a cab.
He gave the driver directions and his fare and closed the door.
He didn’t look holy—
at least not the way most people define holy.
He was wearing a pair of old jeans that were cut off at the bottom
instead of hemmed
and a T-Shirt that was streaked with the drunk’s vomit.
No, most church members wouldn’t consider him holy;
but he was definitely angelic because he beamed with love for the
despised.
As he walked over to me,
he pushed his hair back away from his face, but the wind quickly blew
it right back.
He had a smile beaming on his bearded face as he grabbed me and hugged
me.
(Somewhere down the street, I heard the French Nationalist say to the
intelligent hamsters, “Es hermosa,” which sent them off into another
round of meaningful debate.)
I looked Jesus in the eye and thanked him and turned to walk away again
on my gelatin feet.
Walking down the road,
I gazed to the back and
gained a set of wheels. Driving
down the road
searching for adventure at 55 miles per hour.
I stopped at a green light and invited some friends for a ride.
a hippie with a broken heart.
a missionary punk.
a tortured soul in touch with the world.
a dark-haired girl with a bright smile and soft lips.
We were on the road like something out of a Kerouac novel.
what’s there to say?
the hippie shared her broken heart with me. the punk helped me
understand. the girl in touch with the world showed me the value of
friendship and what an idiot I was. the dark-haired girl made me
invincible.
Of course, the car couldn’t last forever. When the engine died,
everyone went their separate ways. The punk and the hippie found an
unholy balance that I never seemed to understand. The sensitive girl
cried more tears than she deserved. My dark-haired girl discovered her
own motivation.
I kicked the tires for a while.
in my place, wouldn’t you?
I turned up the tape to block out the loneliness,
but ,you know,
things can never be the same.
With the new set of rancid situations,
a new but surprisingly familiar feeling of loneliness
set in. With it was a dark swirl of a myriad of emotions
around me threatening to crush all the sensibility that I thought
reality had.
After sitting on the hood of the car for a while watching the ghosts of
the past run rampant in my brain, i decided it was time to fade into
myself for a while.
It was then that i departed on the grandest pilgrimage of my life.
Ostensibly, it was a tour of various cities and countries. . . some
traditional. . . some modern. . .
and an endless parade of churches.
More importantly, it was a pilgrimage into myself.
Somewhere on the traffic-ridden Roman streets, I gained a sense of
myself because of the ancient ruins of civilization. I learned about
beauty and felt more powerfully what I had lost as I gazed at the Eiffel
Tower from the Seinne river. In London’s night-time streets, I realized
what the missionary punk had been saying all along over a stout cup of
tea.
An island from the insanity as my insomnia came in handy. Awake to
watch every detail as we left.
As i settled down to rest for the first time in twenty-two hours, i
yearned to breathe that air again and—dreaming—vowed to return.
As you ate the chicken,
I watched you sicken
and die.
I have this theory.
We don’t all think alike.
We don’t all see
hear
feel
taste
alike.
Just like each one of us organizes our rooms and offices in our own
unique way,
we each organize our neural pathways in different ways.
That’s why we’re all different.
I was quite offended when they compared me to the common man.
(No! Never the counter! Please not the counter!)
pulling up the rosebuds blooming in the toxic waste.
wandering the rooms in the old house for an eternity of moments.
Perhaps I’ve digressed, but the cappuccino is still an excellent choice.
Feeling somewhat isolated in my madness,
I began to pull even more inward—
that is until I finally turned myself inside-out in the fusial world of
imagination.
When the calvary arrived they tried their best, but slowly my
better-than-imaginary friend faded into the great hereafter.
Now i think i know how all the king’s horses and all the king’s men
felt.
After all we had done for each other, in his darkest hour i wasn’t able
to do a thing except cry into the arms of an angel.
As you ate the chicken,
I watched you sicken
and die.
Inside-out and faded,
I continued to unload in the white zone.
Go ahead and kiss that high-octane maiden.
(I sure wish I had that option.)
Looking to my peripheral vision, I noticed a legion of Christian
soldiers waging war on the non-believers.
Blessed are the peacemakers . . .
I fell in with a tribe of urban freestyle skaters. I understood
perfectly, but—alas—I could never skate.
Suddenly, I found the sound of an earthquake oddly soothing.
If someone has no nerves, how can they itch?
I took up my residence in the library with the intelligent hamsters.
We studied for the pure sake of knowledge.
Until the French Nationalist wandered by and felt that our knowledge was
a threat to the coherent nation-state.
He took the intelligent hamsters and squeezed them one by one until they
met their tragic end.
“Escuché, Señor,” he said, “Es hermosa.”
With that exchange, he left for regions unknown.
But the question that lingered in my mind was “Can he make a good
French omelet?”
I guess it was really irrelevant.
After running a battery of medical exams (which many graduate students
flunked), a doctor pronounced that indeed I was more machine than human.
However, to some degree I was compatible with humanity.
I installed a computerized touchpad on my rear end, but every time I sat
down it beeped.
I really wish those morons would stop pushing that gas pedal on that
loud piece of junk.
All they have done is annoy me,
and sometimes cappuccino loses out to a good cup of English tea.
As I continued my quest
in this epic land with distant heroes,
I found the nuclear family seated around the supper table—
fusion-powered, if you must know.
(This, of course, blocked out certain transmissions from the derelict
souls; and who could contain their occasional violent outbursts?)
Too many folks in this age are fission-powered.
There are only two routes to pure love:
time
and
death.
True love must be symmetrical; that much I’ve learned (too often the
hard way).
But what I want to know is this:
What will happen if you replace it with anti-particles and reverse the
flow of time?
Okay, so God’s omnipresent.
That means He’s not just at every point in physical space just at this
moment. He’s at every point in time simultaneously (because Einstein
proved that time depends on space and space depends on time). Past . .
. Present . . . Future . . . It’s all kind of irrelevant to Him.
Follow me on this.
God can be at all points in space-time because He’s omnipotent, and God
is omniscient because He exists at the sum of all points in space-time.
You dig?
Because God is infinite in volume, He is symmetrical at all points;
and, because God exists at all points in time, He doesn’t change with
time. (I.e. “He’s the same yesterday, today, and forever.”)
Therefore, God is always symmetrical about any axis; and the flow of
time would have no effect of His state. Since God exists at all points
in space-time, He includes both particles and anti-particles—the sum
of the created universe. The concept of particle and anti-particle
quite simply is not relevant.
And God is Love.
And Hate is the absence of Love.
Somewhere back East,
Einstein’s giving a lecture on special relativity
in a room full of Neanderthals.
The Future Leaders of America are puking in
the toilet.
But in my dreams I’m dancing again.
A little closer than reality.
Feeling the understanding—
the connection.
Violet dreams.
Violent pain.
Turn that thing down, will ya?!?
But—you know—I just don’t like Shakespeare.
Yes, sir.
Now mark these words.
In the center of the sky, there was a great star that commanded the
attention of everyone.
At the peak of its stellar career,
the star went supernova,
leaving behind only a small, white dwarf
(which of course would eventually die).
The gaseous matter thrown off in the explosion
coalesced to form a nebula.
Out of this nebular cradle were born fifty stars.
And everyone marveled at the significance of the stars.
“It is a sign from God,” they all said;
but it affected me not at all.
It’s not that I didn’t like the new stars;
it’s just that they were really no different than all the other stars.
Besides,
I think I would have known if it were a sign from God.
The fiery prophet told
a tale
red like blood,
sweet like honey,
with a dash of hot sauce.
Munching a bowl of lettuce
covered with ranch dressing,
I watched as an inter-species alliance waged war on entropy.
Alas, cellular death met them all with a bio-physical grin.
Have you ever met your soul mate
then questioned the existence of such metaphysics?
After losing a piece of my subconsciousness,
I began to offer a sacrifice at my musical altar—
big piles of power tools, extension cords, guns, electric razors, nails,
violence, stubbornness, and motor oil
which I immediately set aflame.
Realizing that every time I cared
I was just another heretic,
I began to nail myself to the altar;
and, at least on one level,
I never moved off.
In the shadows of the twilight,
i became little more than a background image.
an ashen spectre haunting peripheral sight and memory.
existing in a different realm. dimension.
unable to use complete sentences.
i lost the capacity to care.
it doesn’t matter anyway.
ingesting physical substance
to seem real—
just because there’s nothing else to do.
i’m black-and-white in a world of color TV.
the dull throb of a headache that doesn’t exist.
there’s so much to do.
there’s nothing to do
except embrace the institution.
subjective existence.
i’m a parallel processor with no tasks.
a rainbow of greys.
neither a smile or a frown.
brain-numb in the mental fog of normalcy
and linear time and values are non-existent in the present.
As you ate the chicken,
I watched you sicken
and die.
The long day at last faded to night,
and I began to wander through a Gothic mansion with an infinite number
of finite rooms.
A nursery with clocks set ahead by one hour and five minutes. The room
was warmer than the rest of the house with the persistent smell of
mashed potatoes and pot roast.
A tall-ceilinged room reminiscent of a Cathedral and lined with shelves
of broken porcelain dolls—dolls with angelic, sacred, feminine faces
now cracked.
A library with three volumes detailing the failure of the human
condition.
A bathroom with an unflushed toilet.
An anteroom with a cracked mirror on the wall that could only speak the
truth. Looking into the mirror, I saw a thousand things at once—
A psychology book burning a sociology book.
A group that wasn’t made up of individuals.
A taco in a soft tortilla shell.
A shadow lurking in the perpetual twilight.
A pale-skinned vampire feeding on the personalities of others.
A subway train filled with punks and angels.
A list within a list within a bowl of miso soup.
A book with the wrong answers in the back to throw everyone off.
A Shakespearean tragedy in 70’s jive.
A frog that couldn’t stand tadpoles.
An internal palace with no external structure.
A weeping clown.
Infinity with a side order of grits.
Wouldn’t you say that night has a certain lucidity?
As I reached the outskirts of the primal garden that surronded the
estate,
I began to think about why it is that sailors have to know how to swim
but airmen don’t have to know how to fly. But, anyway . . .
The garden was as dark and gothic as the house, being watered by the
tears of mortals and immortals.
In one region of the garden, one flower burned with a flaming silence;
and the flower’s name was Journey’s Everlasting Morning. Journey’s
Everlasting Morning indeed brought light into my darkened consciousness.
I wanted nothing more than to take Journey’s Everlasting Morning with
me on the rest of my journey, but Journey’s Everlasting Morning shared
her roots with a blue wildflower. Nothing I could do would separate
Journey’s Everlasting Morning from the wildflower without killing her in
the process. I stumbled blindly out of the garden with the saline taste
of my tears still flavoring the ground that Journey’s Everlasting
Morning searched for nutrients.
In the greater schemes
of hopes and dreams,
it doesn’t matter anyway.
The night was dark.
I mean really, really dark.
It was black ink spilled and pooling on a black canvas.
It was coal painted black.
It was burned turkey basted in crude oil.
It was apparently a series of bad metaphors.
In this darkness, I reached a mental crossroad
where beginnings intersected endings.
I fell to my knees and offered a prayer of desperation
as psychological friction at last brought me to a stop with our minds
scarred with images of each other.
I began to feel like I was the lab rat in some cosmic experiment.
I’m not really human.
I’m actually from another planet.
Or maybe I’m just an experimental android.
I was given to my parents when I landed
(was activated . . . emerged from the sea . . . )
Since then, they (not my parents, mind you—they—the people behind
all this) have been watching me in various ways.
They put video cameras in the showerheads.
They’re behind every mirror.
They put a microchip in my brain so they could track me.
They have listening devices all around the house.
Everytime I go somewhere, they make copies of everything I write.
Sometimes I think they can even read my thoughts.
They’re writing all of it down in their little book
(file folder . . . clipboard . . . computer database . . . ).
One day, I’ll die; and they’ll analyze the data.
Or maybe they’ll finish the experiment before I’m dead, and then they’ll
just lock me up in a cage.
One thing’s for sure—everyone’s in on it.
All of my successes and failures are carefully planned and acted out in
this grand project.
Nothing is real, and I can’t escape.
After having an introspective discussion with reality’s
only known zero-sided polygon,
I reached the conclusion that love is just another psychological
disorder.
I also finally admitted to myself that there is such beauty in
orthogonal sets.
And raisin bran is a powerful breakfast weapon.
And fire is beyond mere sentience and intelligence.
And life is symphonic open-form poetry.
In other words:
The past is a ghost.
The future is a dream.
This day is a day to change reality.
Pulling myself out of the muck,
I raised both arms to the sky and raised my battle cry
in a prophetic and convicting voice.
I’m tired of living with one eye facing behind.
I’m tired of wanting to be the center of a blue-eyed universe.
I’m sick of auditioning for the starring role in your blue-eyed dreams.
It’s quite apparent that all those quests are doomed to failure.
You’ve found your dimension, and I’m afraid that it doesn’t include me
in its parameters.
I’m a verbal engineer.
Why? Because there is an intuitive logic of the word whether you see it
or not.
One doesn’t know the answers and meanings—one has to feel them.
Mere facts will never help you understand.
I’m a sinner, but that doesn’t prohibit my sainthood.
It all boils down to the limit of me as I approach infinity.
There is no equality.
I will repent,
and we will forget
all the things that might have been.
I will smell the flowers, but I will not pluck them.
Question the questions.
Answer the answers;
and, above all, find the soundtrack to your life.
I have found my escape velocity,
and I fear that I must create some universal critiques.
I am going to taste the sunshine.
I wish you the world, the universe on a string, and a little green frog
that will turn into your prince.
Sadly, I am no amphibian.
Las estrellas brillaban, mais j’étais mort.
I walked into a business office in (appropriately)
a business suit;
but, you know, they laughed at me because—
Heaven forbid—I had unknowingly selected a tie
that didn’t match.
The next day I showed up naked.
I guess I showed them.
Hate drove up in a big pick-up truck
armed with a marvelous arsenal of epithets.
With a smile and a wink,
I dismissed him
and heard my entire life in a trumpet solo.
Then, I knew that my life had been more
singular than plural,
and it was about time for
a meatier meteor.
Just quit your fakin’
and bring home the bacon
and grits—
Oh, yes!
The grits.
Meanwhile,
a couple of cubicles down,
an eager young executive
mistook a green paintball for a lime gumball.
As he sprinted for the toilet,
somewhere a steel marble
and a bucket of green peas
screamed in anguish.
Somewhere else entirely,
God was reading a book on Quantum Physics and laughing hysterically.
“Je t’aime, mon amie,” screamed one million voices in my head.
As I blindly rounded a corner,
the abstract forms of a legion of boogeymen
pointed at me accusingly, chanting,
“You love her! You love her!”
I clamped my hands over my ears and closed my eyes to block out the
reality that I knew existed.
Instead, I merely exposed myself to the afterimages of flashbulb
memories burned into my brain and heart that I thought I had left behind
long ago.
I held on to those blue-eyed afterimages, looked deep in my heart, and
found love that had never died.
I love you.
It was the word of God.
It was jazz.
It was poetry.
Holding it before me like a crucifix, I used love to chase away my
personal demons.
I fell in love on rainy days
because the sun is much too bright.
While passing through a nursing home,
I saw a wagon with a broken wheel;
and I understood
that angels die—
much like dreams.
My tears were dry, silent,
and—some would (foolishly) say—non-existent.
In my grief,
I remembered a tale about
a bat, a chicken, and a modest proposal (now rejected)
with a sad, painful smile.
Truth is in some ways both a painkiller and emotional torture,
but it is absolutely essential
for love and existence.
The time between finger snaps
can be eternity.
Insanity is only a song away,
and the dance never stops
in the sky or in my mind.
Sometimes I feel like I should be out there
in the night,
but there are no smiles
or hugs.
I feel the night
with a piece of my soul that I left
behind years ago
in the care of a friend.
(I stalked the night with wink and some tears.)
Have you ever tasted the detail of a medieval fresco
or touched the flesh of Rembrandt portrait?
Have you ever felt the burning colors of a Van Gogh evening?
Observe the banality of the feudal fresco. Ah, the symphony within a
symphony within a bucket of dirt. There is never absolutely nothing.
And timing is the connection between the end and three hours of blissful
wandering.
The past never seems to change, and the dreams never fade.
But the fresco is still there.
The portrait is breathing,
and the colors burn with eternal warmth.
Immortal.
Millions of paintings
in thousands of churches
in thousands of homes
in the eye and heart—no the very soul—of one admirer.
I realized at last that I had forgotten to blink; and, with the
momentary interruption,
the spell was broken.
Allowing myself to fade into the art once more,
I pondered love as the sublime.
How many hearts broken…How many tears shed…How many peals of
laughter…How much sublimity from the hands of one?
The hands of one touch the hearts of many,
and I am no different in the end.
The lover is the artist.
The masses stand in awe,
and I fade in
then out
into nothing,
dreaming of sublime existence.
I found myself lying in the gutter,
pondering sublimity.
I decided that I had frowned around for far too long.
I picked myself up and danced in the manner of children and fools.
Dreams are like eighties movies.
There’s never love in the beginning. That ruins the plot.
Themes of discovery.
The outcast doesn’t find a home in the mainstream.
Instead, he draws the mainstream out of conformity
and, in doing so, finds love and lightning.
Yes, I pondered this with a smile.
This is substandard, but that’s the way it always begins.
I picked up the lives I had manufactured and played the games of
children.
I remembered a poetic groove, brother;
and I got thirsty.
I popped open a can of soda
and dealt a game of solitaire
with a big lightning rod in my hand like a scepter.
I am the king.
Every time I see you,
I fall in love again.
Walking in a daze,
I felt the need to pray.
I walked into the door of the nearby church,
seeking some inner peace;
and, instead, I found a wedding.
Juliet had found someone else.
I wept—
but not for the usual reasons.
As I looked at the angelic young bride
dressed in her whitest gown,
I wondered how fresh
and innocent we really were;
and I knew that it was a sin
for a man to love an angel.
The couple sealed their vows with a kiss,
and I lost everything.
The two became one, and I
merely remained
zero.
A hole is an emptiness—an island of non-existence in an
ocean of existence.
Is it right to say,
“There is a hole,”
since, in doing so, you are declaring that
non-existence exists?
Likewise,
It seems even more wrong to say,
“There is not a hole,”
since this seems to mean
that there is no emptiness in the specified object.
However, there are no verbs of non-existence.
How many times have I
pulled myself out of the
gutter with some
GREAT NEW EPIPHANY
only to fall back to my knees
again and crawl back to my hole?
Prophets and poets take on the sufferings of the world.
Poets are broken everyday,
and prophets become martyrs,
but neither ever dies.
I was again broken out of my mental revelry by an urge to sing.
I began to sing a song of my own invention—
a song that consisted solely of harmony.
It was at about this time that the French nationalist came up behind me
and tapped me on the shoulder.
I was startled and immediately stopped singing.
I turned around and saw who it was.
As I started to speak, he put a finger to his lips,
whispered “Es hermosa,”
and walked off before I could speak.
Suddenly, I felt like one pole without another to define my existence.
In the whole of an infinite universe,
there is only one melody for every harmony
and lots of cream and sugar for coffee.
You know how a song just gets stuck in your head
and you end up humming and singing it all day
wherever you go?
That’s what happened to me.
I sang the harmony song everywhere I went the rest of the day—
In the bookstore.
Down the sidewalk.
Past reality.
Out of dreams.
Into nightmares where the sun shines bright and people are happy and in
love (but not with me).
Finally, I plopped rather unceremoniously down in a tiny booth in the
dark corner of a little diner, which gave me a perfect view of the
streets and the rest of the diner.
I ordered a cup of coffee—not because I really wanted a cup, though. I
merely wanted to watch the steam float slowly upwards toward the dim
lights on the ceiling and disappear before it could ever reach it.
I turned my eyes toward the others in the diner without ever really
moving my eyes. It was actually more like I just focused them on the
people for the first time since coming in.
I watched as the old men sat at the bar,
Eating their ham and eggs (”all-nite breakfast”)
Talking about college football
Taking a gulp of black coffee
Talking about the abnormal weather
and finally finishing up their meal and lighting up a full-flavor
cigarette while the waitress filled their coffee mugs with a fresh pot
of coffee.
I looked down at my own cup and realized that the steam had stopped. I
finished off the lukewarm cup and looked at the grounds that had settled
at the bottom of the mug. Noticing that bit of coffee that never seems
to leave the cup, I began swirling it around slowly, methodically, for
no reason whatsoever and humming my little song in the monotone that is
harmony in a sad song. This was no pop ballad—no gold record
multi-platinum “go-get-your-copy-`cause-all-your-friends-have-it”
song. Rather, it was a song that lived and had lived. It was the sort of
song that said, “I’ve seen life, brother,” and wagged its head at you.
The humming faded seamlessly off into merely breathing in a span of time
that seemed both infinite and definite at the same time.
I turned my head and looked out the window as I sat the coffee cup down.
Snow had begun to fall in flurries, drifting lazily to the ground and
melting as it hit the pavement outside. As the people walked by, you
could see each breath they took for just a moment; and then it would
fade away only to be replaced by another breath in that same instant.
The steam from their breaths mingled in a way that people never seem to
do, mixing in a vaporous cloud as each person passed the other in a
hurry to get absolutely nowhere that would matter anyway.
My eyes fell on a young couple that wasn’t moving quite as quickly as
the rest of the crowd. He seemed to be a young man in his twenties with
close-cropped sandy hair that moved with the wind nevertheless. His
companion seemed younger than he, but that could have been an illusion
produced by her height. She looked like an elf with her green eyes and
petite frame and was obviously freezing in the cold winter air as the
snowflakes hit her face and melted upon impact. He spoke to her; and, in
that instant, she looked up at him with a look that listened rather than
responded. He drew her closer to him, under his coat, and kissed the top
of her head as she snuggled close to him and wrapped her arm around his
waist.
I looked away. I noticed that the floor was rather dusty, and this
thought dominated my mind for the next few moments.
The waitress came by and offered me some fresh coffee. I accepted, and
she poured. As she dipped the pot to pour the coffee, it ran out in a
stream and released a new torrent of steam which almost—but not quite
- reached the ceiling. As she stopped pouring and pulled the pot away, a
few drops spilled on the table and just sat there.
I put my hands above the cup and caught the steam in my hands just to
feel the warmth before letting it drift toward the ceiling.
I scanned the diner rather panoramically, soaking up the atmosphere.
Over in the corner, a young woman was dabbing a french fry into some
ketchup as the little boy with her took a large bite out of his
child-sized burger. She took the fry to her lips and bit the end
daintily before setting the fry down on her plate. She reached across
the table and tousled the boy’s hair lovingly, and he looked up at her
with ketchup on his lip and smiled. She took her napkin out of her lap
and wiped his mouth clean even as he was picking up his burger again.
It was at this time that I saw a familiar movement near the door.
Glancing in that direction, I noticed that it was the girl from the side
of the road. She looked at me just as I was looking at her, and we
shared that uncomfortable moment when you both realize that you’re
staring.
I darted my eyes away and pondered my right shoe for a moment.
When I looked up, she was there right beside the table. I stood up -
perhaps a bit too quickly—and she hugged me, leaving me confused as to
what exactly I should do with my hands.
Ah, this was bliss, this moment. If I closed my eyes, I could almost
imagine myself to be that young couple that had just walked by my
window.
But I didn’t close my eyes; and, as she drew away, I noticed for the
first time that she wasn’t alone. No, she had with her a young man not
unlike the fellow who had just passed by me (though perhaps a bit
younger).
Even as introductions were made, I invited them to sit down in my little
corner booth. They both crowded in on the opposite side with a certain
familiarity that spoke of contentment and commitment.
They spoke to me, and I responded without any conscious knowledge (or
even any real recollection even now) of the conversation. Instead, I
watched their every subtle move. She held his right hand while he played
with her silky hair with his left. Every motion they made breathed love
in a steamy vapor that hung just over our heads and went no higher.
Every time I looked in her eyes, she sentenced me to death; and every
time they glanced each other, I died.
They ordered hot chocolate to drive away the winter’s chill. The
waitress brought them two steaming dark blue mugs with marshmallows
bobbing in the chocolatey liquid each time she took a step.
They spoke to me in between sips and hugs—I, bobbing my head and
thinking to myself in voiceovers.
After finishing their cocoa and speaking in tones that sounded like
farewells, they left me standing beside the little table and watching
them go out the doors and down the sidewalk.
When they were out of my sight, I realized that I was still standing and
immediately resumed my seat at the little booth.
I breathed out to expel some of the residual tension and left myself
empty.
I looked down at my shoes again and thought absolutely nothing.
When I looked up, it was to scan the diner once again. The old men had
begun to trickle away, and a younger crowd seeped in to fill their
spots. I thought of the numerous young women sitting alone in the diner.
I wondered if they liked their coffee and whether they took it black or
with sugar and cream. I wondered what sort of music they liked, if they
had any pets, if they liked chocolate, and—most of all—if they were
alone just like me. I almost got up and spoke to one of them, sitting
over in the light in a little booth by the bar.
The waitress came by and asked me if I’d like some more coffee. I moved
my cup toward her in agreement, dragging it through the drops spilt
earlier. As she scurried off toward the well-lighted kitchen, I watched
the steam from my cup head toward the ceiling and fade away.
Are you frightened?
Are you frightening?
Are you loving?
Are you loved?
Come.
Sit at the
Pneumatic Buffet.
Taste the enigma of
ten-thousand years.
There’s a taste for everyone,
and we always leave the table clean.
I walked out of the café
and embraced the cold night,
taking it up as my chosen cross.
There is no escape from solitude.
There are only dreams
and the frustration of beauty.
Iron is the taste of fear,
and tears are the taste of broken glass.
Eyes have a light that comes to me in waves
of insanity.
How many times—
in how many faces—
have I felt the merest echo of the Other?
I have not found my melody.
I’m not even sure she exists.
I’ve only the merest shade
in my dreams
and in my failures.
For now, the night will be my lover;
and sometimes loneliness can be a bride.
I stayed out the rest of the night,
looking at the stars
and wondering how much of what I saw was absolutely nothing.
Remarkably,
the sun rose that morning
just like it had every morning before.
It made its way lazily across the sky
and finally faded to somewhere beyond the horizon.
And the next morning it came and went
only to repeat the process the very next day.
So life went on in an endless parade of rising and setting,
and some—but certainly not all—lived happily ever after.
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