I am prisoner to humanity's most creatively crippled monuments. Rotten parts and crossbeams whose only pulse is the steady thrum of termites and the gelatinous fear of movement.
Every time we build this barn, we have to watch it fall apart.
The families of cockroaches and cows surviving inside don't even bother filing out; they'll survive the fallout, and we'll be dumb enough to still cook and eat their flesh. The roaches won't even touch us without cleaning themselves.
Our parents smile again as we erect these pillars, the local priest and all his parish will pat us gratefully on our backs again.
"Ya done good, kid. Ya put your daddy's place back in order."
I grimace and can't wait to watch it burn.
There's a thousand different endings. Outside, the wind still whips; I watch the mercury crack and slide slowly out the bottom, pooling in mock disgust and laughing at my naivete. I don't know what to make of it anymore.
"What's so wrong with glasses?"
"Nothing. Unless they know you're coming."
Werewolves and shapeshifters--some call it paranoia. I know they're all after me. They look just like my bro. Their fangs seem to smile even in their sleep. They're tossing and turning on my borrowed couch. I know it's coming.
What in the hell are they waiting for?
We pry open car doors. My friends don't bother locking theirs. The vehicle lurches into the night. I should feel gravity giving up as we're climbing through the timberline. It's a bumpy ride. And the lead that replaced my lungs and stomach slips deeper down inside me.
"This is where we lose reception," he says, pointing to the display on his cell phone. My other friend nods in acknowledgement. The driver presses on, and I feel the world slur drunkenly. The car seems to vomit and barrel roll through the night.
"Remember the last time we were here?" I ask. Quizzical stares. "What? It was the same as now. We were running for our lives then, too."
"You feeling okay?"
"I don't know how you can be so fucking flippant about this."
If we could jump right over the river, ignore the coming crevasse and float right on...We'd float downstream. Would our souls wash ashore? Would the local police know how to identify them, strap tags onto our dreams, ambitions, and best intentions?
I realize what's been eating at me when every dream is nothing but a metaphor for descent.
The driver turns the dial; the music is more brooding. It's louder than before, and I have no choice but to settle further back into the leather and hope this drive will be different from the last. I can already see us at the end crawling out of the car, scrambling for something still.
And where the fuck did I lose the last five years?
This mountain grows deeper every year. I sleep in the wake of its shadow. And my body is the divide.
Sunday, August 29, 2010
Sunday, May 2, 2010
Samsara
And calmer than the face of a woman telling lies I watched the way you were transmogrified.
"For the greater good," they said.
I look around and all I see is Eliot's Waste Land. I look around and wonder how we even have convictions anymore.
"Is it feedback you're looking for? You're fucking up."
Thanks, brother.
The soiled napkins, the excuses for progeny in which we spilled our seed, float downstream.
Have we sinned against God and Nature? Against ourselves?
Fishing in the black hole, where a moon ago we drowned, where a moon ago we borrowed every semblance of suicide, what can we expect to keep?
Oh, God, why did this ever have to happen to me? You know you mean everything to me. And you could never be a mistake, your will could never be policed.
Apollo's existence is a fallacy. But science proved that long ago. Heliocentrism and all of that.
Helios drives the chariot; I watch the sky.
Daedalus demands; I abide.
"But, son, please keep a steady wing. And know you're the only one that means anything to me. Steer clear of the sun, or you'll find yourself in the sea."
The promise of release, safety, your grandfather dreams. Somewhere between abomination and his only progeny.
I fell flat and prayed to the gods of yesteryear. I fell flat and prayed on a kitchen floor soiled from years of grease and childish grief. Do the stains of my tears reach you still? I'll just let your silence speak.
Don't forget my name. Don't forget to tell them I believed. Even if I couldn't be the one who held you in my arms.
"But I've got a plan and some wax and some string; some feathers I stole from the birds. We leap from the cliff and we hear the wind sing a song that's too perfect for words."
I hope you were smiling, I hope you were crying, I hope you felt it all. In that second with your mother, the one who wouldn't have me, I hope you had it all.
Don't lose yourself in the throes of the sea.
"For the greater good," they said.
I look around and all I see is Eliot's Waste Land. I look around and wonder how we even have convictions anymore.
"Is it feedback you're looking for? You're fucking up."
Thanks, brother.
The soiled napkins, the excuses for progeny in which we spilled our seed, float downstream.
Have we sinned against God and Nature? Against ourselves?
Fishing in the black hole, where a moon ago we drowned, where a moon ago we borrowed every semblance of suicide, what can we expect to keep?
Oh, God, why did this ever have to happen to me? You know you mean everything to me. And you could never be a mistake, your will could never be policed.
Apollo's existence is a fallacy. But science proved that long ago. Heliocentrism and all of that.
Helios drives the chariot; I watch the sky.
Daedalus demands; I abide.
"But, son, please keep a steady wing. And know you're the only one that means anything to me. Steer clear of the sun, or you'll find yourself in the sea."
The promise of release, safety, your grandfather dreams. Somewhere between abomination and his only progeny.
I fell flat and prayed to the gods of yesteryear. I fell flat and prayed on a kitchen floor soiled from years of grease and childish grief. Do the stains of my tears reach you still? I'll just let your silence speak.
Don't forget my name. Don't forget to tell them I believed. Even if I couldn't be the one who held you in my arms.
"But I've got a plan and some wax and some string; some feathers I stole from the birds. We leap from the cliff and we hear the wind sing a song that's too perfect for words."
I hope you were smiling, I hope you were crying, I hope you felt it all. In that second with your mother, the one who wouldn't have me, I hope you had it all.
Don't lose yourself in the throes of the sea.
Monday, January 18, 2010
Chaucer Rocks My Emo Socks
"But thanne felte this Troilus swich wo
That he was wel neigh wood; for ay his drede
Was this, that she som wight hadde loved so,
That nevere of hym she wolde han taken hede,
For which hym thoughte he felte his herte blede"
~Chaucer - Troilus and Criseyde bk. 1, lines 498-502
"I'm cuddling close
To blankets and sheets
But you're not alone, and you're not discreet
Make sure I know who's taking you home."
~Dashboard Confessional - "Screaming Infidelities"
"Thise wordes, and ful many an other to,
He spak, and called evere in his compleynte
Hire name, for to tellen hire his wo,
Til neigh that he in salte teres dreynte.
Al was for nought: she herde nat his pleynte;
And whan that he bythought on that folie,
A thousand fold his wo gan multiplie."
~Chaucer - Troilus and Criseyde bk. 1, lines 540-546
"Wandering this house
like I've never wanted out
and this is about as social as I get now.
And I'm throwing away the letters that I am writing you
'cause they would never do,
I would never do, never."
~Dashboard Confessional - "Saints and Sailors"
And you thought those emo boys were annoying. No, no, no, they weren't the first.
God, I hate Chaucer.
That he was wel neigh wood; for ay his drede
Was this, that she som wight hadde loved so,
That nevere of hym she wolde han taken hede,
For which hym thoughte he felte his herte blede"
~Chaucer - Troilus and Criseyde bk. 1, lines 498-502
"I'm cuddling close
To blankets and sheets
But you're not alone, and you're not discreet
Make sure I know who's taking you home."
~Dashboard Confessional - "Screaming Infidelities"
"Thise wordes, and ful many an other to,
He spak, and called evere in his compleynte
Hire name, for to tellen hire his wo,
Til neigh that he in salte teres dreynte.
Al was for nought: she herde nat his pleynte;
And whan that he bythought on that folie,
A thousand fold his wo gan multiplie."
~Chaucer - Troilus and Criseyde bk. 1, lines 540-546
"Wandering this house
like I've never wanted out
and this is about as social as I get now.
And I'm throwing away the letters that I am writing you
'cause they would never do,
I would never do, never."
~Dashboard Confessional - "Saints and Sailors"
And you thought those emo boys were annoying. No, no, no, they weren't the first.
God, I hate Chaucer.
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Post-?
"Your poetry's so...poetic. Sincerely, I'm impressed."
We break the molds stitch them back together to fill them up again with the same old drivel.
Didactic is a word that's been bouncing around my skull for days now. And it's the agenda I just can't get behind. But what am I?
We have this nothing, and it's nothing because I say it's nothing in spite of all your protestations otherwise (which makes you equally correct, of course). Well, we're both correct. But we can't be entirely correct because, you see, so is everyone else--correct, that is. And if I'm correct, and you're correct, and they're correct, all of them, too, then there must be some grand amalgam we can, for lack of a better word, call Correct.
But that's not right.
You see, there is no right, there is no wrong. You start with nothing and you work from there.
And this all made sense to someone (perhaps a few too many someones), and they rode on the backs of fiery Truth and told us all there is no Truth.
You will never make a difference.
It took the modern world posting itself before they came back around to the idea Zen Buddhists came up with hundreds of years ago...or something like it. Speaking strictly metaphysically, I suppose I could get behind this. But, please, will someone tell me how to live?
It does me no good to reach the end of the guidebook and find the pages being eaten by a nest of roaches. Imagine reaching the end of the Bible and there never being any mention of a New Jerusalem. Where do all the people go? It's useless.
And maybe that's the point.
And then, forty years later, people like you and me come along and are pissed at the way things have been going and want to know what's the point in proceeding any further down this path. So, we start writing. And now, we have an agenda. And we'll show them, we'll stick it to them, won't we--you and me, all the way? Won't we?
And just like always, I get distracted by the curves of your body, and you get swallowed in the deep sea blue of my eyes. And hours later, we lay exhausted, trying to figure out how all this happened. We don't care about dismantling the universe to the last speck of dust. We don't care about nihilism, absence, lack, and nothing. It's procreation we're interested in. We've gone back to our most basic instincts. We have to not just ignore, but obliterate the past. We negate the negation which has already negated itself. And even that's not enough, unfortunately.
We're post-post-post-apocalypse...or something. But isn't that playing right into their hand? I swear, it makes me want to tear my hair out. We've been painted into a corner and find it nearly impossible to make our way out.
Is this the way they must have felt when they started? When the realists rejected the romanticists (pshaw!), when the modernists pushed forward from realism and naturalism, when the postmodernists said, "Fuck all!"?
So, seriously. I know this question has been lingering in everyone's minds probably since the 70s or 80s (and poststructuralists are no answer), but where do we go from here?
Because I can't make the same mistake they did. Postmodernity wishes to escape the binds of Modernity, but then lacks the foresight to even remove modern from its name. Or maybe it was intentional. Maybe because it signifies nothing. Or everything. All. Absence. An absent parent? Maybe because in any age--past, present, or future--postmodern will always be an anachronistic word.
So, we can't go with post-postmodernism (though, certainly, the label has been applied before). But by this point, doesn't it all lose its meaning (and wasn't it supposed to have already?...of course not).
So, what, what, what the fuck are we doing? And when we wake with the morning sun, how will we live with ourselves? And who is going to show us how?
We break the molds stitch them back together to fill them up again with the same old drivel.
Didactic is a word that's been bouncing around my skull for days now. And it's the agenda I just can't get behind. But what am I?
We have this nothing, and it's nothing because I say it's nothing in spite of all your protestations otherwise (which makes you equally correct, of course). Well, we're both correct. But we can't be entirely correct because, you see, so is everyone else--correct, that is. And if I'm correct, and you're correct, and they're correct, all of them, too, then there must be some grand amalgam we can, for lack of a better word, call Correct.
But that's not right.
You see, there is no right, there is no wrong. You start with nothing and you work from there.
And this all made sense to someone (perhaps a few too many someones), and they rode on the backs of fiery Truth and told us all there is no Truth.
You will never make a difference.
It took the modern world posting itself before they came back around to the idea Zen Buddhists came up with hundreds of years ago...or something like it. Speaking strictly metaphysically, I suppose I could get behind this. But, please, will someone tell me how to live?
It does me no good to reach the end of the guidebook and find the pages being eaten by a nest of roaches. Imagine reaching the end of the Bible and there never being any mention of a New Jerusalem. Where do all the people go? It's useless.
And maybe that's the point.
And then, forty years later, people like you and me come along and are pissed at the way things have been going and want to know what's the point in proceeding any further down this path. So, we start writing. And now, we have an agenda. And we'll show them, we'll stick it to them, won't we--you and me, all the way? Won't we?
And just like always, I get distracted by the curves of your body, and you get swallowed in the deep sea blue of my eyes. And hours later, we lay exhausted, trying to figure out how all this happened. We don't care about dismantling the universe to the last speck of dust. We don't care about nihilism, absence, lack, and nothing. It's procreation we're interested in. We've gone back to our most basic instincts. We have to not just ignore, but obliterate the past. We negate the negation which has already negated itself. And even that's not enough, unfortunately.
We're post-post-post-apocalypse...or something. But isn't that playing right into their hand? I swear, it makes me want to tear my hair out. We've been painted into a corner and find it nearly impossible to make our way out.
Is this the way they must have felt when they started? When the realists rejected the romanticists (pshaw!), when the modernists pushed forward from realism and naturalism, when the postmodernists said, "Fuck all!"?
So, seriously. I know this question has been lingering in everyone's minds probably since the 70s or 80s (and poststructuralists are no answer), but where do we go from here?
Because I can't make the same mistake they did. Postmodernity wishes to escape the binds of Modernity, but then lacks the foresight to even remove modern from its name. Or maybe it was intentional. Maybe because it signifies nothing. Or everything. All. Absence. An absent parent? Maybe because in any age--past, present, or future--postmodern will always be an anachronistic word.
So, we can't go with post-postmodernism (though, certainly, the label has been applied before). But by this point, doesn't it all lose its meaning (and wasn't it supposed to have already?...of course not).
So, what, what, what the fuck are we doing? And when we wake with the morning sun, how will we live with ourselves? And who is going to show us how?
Friday, November 6, 2009
Regret and Ailing Health
On Death and Dying. We compromise. The megalomaniacal leering head hovering just outside my step, and my overwhelming desire to punch it in the face (not because that's all that's there, but more because I simply want to punch something in the face).
Sleep is the madman's dream, his only fix. I miss it all. I wake up sick and coughing and wonder if the drugs coursing through my veins will keep me going for one more day or drop me dead where I stand. I really should have been there, and now I can't (or won't?).
Things have changed. Dear God, they've changed.
I miss the humidity, the sweat on your forehead from a hard day's work of simply sitting in the shade. I miss the drives to nowhere that always ended somewhere (probably a Waffle House). We had friends and family, and now we don't know how to hang on to either. I really should have been there.
And why now, of all times?
I need some sleep. I need some peace.
"If I don't get some shelter, oh yeah, I'm gonna fade away."
I've gotten ahead...finally. But I feel years slipping off my life, and I wonder if I can make it another two.
This was a mistake.
Sleep is the madman's dream, his only fix. I miss it all. I wake up sick and coughing and wonder if the drugs coursing through my veins will keep me going for one more day or drop me dead where I stand. I really should have been there, and now I can't (or won't?).
Things have changed. Dear God, they've changed.
I miss the humidity, the sweat on your forehead from a hard day's work of simply sitting in the shade. I miss the drives to nowhere that always ended somewhere (probably a Waffle House). We had friends and family, and now we don't know how to hang on to either. I really should have been there.
And why now, of all times?
I need some sleep. I need some peace.
"If I don't get some shelter, oh yeah, I'm gonna fade away."
I've gotten ahead...finally. But I feel years slipping off my life, and I wonder if I can make it another two.
This was a mistake.
Saturday, June 6, 2009
Even Angels
Running through the garden again. And breaking stained-glass windows. I like to watch the light cascade down. And bless the people inside. They never know how to react. Everyone just stares. They're missing their chance. I don't know what else I can do to tell them. I've tried everything.
I see you inside. You're standing on the pew trying to get a better look. You always were the type.
I begin to turn away and make my exodus. Before they come running carrying stones yet hurling only insults. I love this intimidation game. I find your eyes. And their intentions are unmistakable....As always.
And I know I'm bringing you with me. My hand through the window. And your feet taking flight. Neither of us really even sure where we're headed anymore. But one thing is for certain....
By the time we're through, even angels will shake, fall, and shatter.
I see you inside. You're standing on the pew trying to get a better look. You always were the type.
I begin to turn away and make my exodus. Before they come running carrying stones yet hurling only insults. I love this intimidation game. I find your eyes. And their intentions are unmistakable....As always.
And I know I'm bringing you with me. My hand through the window. And your feet taking flight. Neither of us really even sure where we're headed anymore. But one thing is for certain....
By the time we're through, even angels will shake, fall, and shatter.
Saturday, May 30, 2009
What Will Happen?
It's been some time. And now we're standing together in public places. There are a thousand electro-light fads walking about sneering in every direction. At least half of them want you. I just want you to know that I know absolutely nothing. Don't think I don't perceive your reticent behavior.
And I find myself inquiring if physical touch is a permissible action that may be taken in such a place as this. You confirm my suspicions. It's OK. If only we were OK.
I'm not so sure I can handle this. I still think I want to try. But things cannot remain this way. Because I promise you that I'll drop you just like yesterday's bad habit.
.
.
.
.
Just to pick you back up again....
"Done, done, and I’m on to the next one."
And I find myself inquiring if physical touch is a permissible action that may be taken in such a place as this. You confirm my suspicions. It's OK. If only we were OK.
I'm not so sure I can handle this. I still think I want to try. But things cannot remain this way. Because I promise you that I'll drop you just like yesterday's bad habit.
.
.
.
.
Just to pick you back up again....
"Done, done, and I’m on to the next one."
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