ego

The part of me that you will not recognize
is the only part of me that feels true
and any accusations
of false being, explicit or implied
will fall upon deaf ears
the person whom you are intending to accuse
is not here

The place we take

A quiet peaceful something
  A reality, less a violent abstraction than a white florescent hum
   And how we might be, content, upon occasion
    With blissful flights of playful banter in between
     With odd looks and sideways glances, interrupted
      The place we take, we will amount to something
       The place we take will be ours indeed

quiet punishment

Girls with boyfriends deserve my hatred
and I will make no apologies
for my bitter thoughts during our pleasant-seeming conversation.
It was, after all,
your decision to make
so, now you must endure this punishment:
My unspoken resentment
hovering just beneath this facade
of contentment.

loved her not

At first, he was certain
that he loved her
once long before and never again.
but afterwards, he fell into doubt
thinking now that truely,
he loved her
not at all, and never before
this pointed moment.

Aggressive Therapy

Drink to loneliness.
Drink to hopelessness, helplessness.
Whatever you do, don't drink to good times and blue skies.
Because that's not what this is here for.
Club life is the kind of aggressive therapy where if you punch a hole in the wall, or throw something shatterable, it means you've learned something about yourself. Despite the look of it, this behavior is not some violent escapism. It's dealing with real problems from unconventional angles.
Scream. Shout profanities. Wallow in it. Run away, disappear. Just don't delude yourself. Your life is not perfect. It doesn't have to be.
It's not going to be. The secret of life isn't waiting to be discovered by a lifetime of experience and careful contemplation. The answers are not in the future. They're right here.
So drink up. This is all we get.
...It's the kind of advice you can't get from your doctor.

Year book photos

I can't pretend to be someone I'm not
simply, because I have no idea what “what I am” would consist of.
I can guess, I can point at my past and say,
“here! Here I am!” But really those are just year book photos from high school.
They tell me I had brown hair, and trouble smiling for mechanical 30 milli meter eyes.
If anything,
that uncomfortable half-smile tells me who I'm not.
If that was where I was, then where I am now must be different.
I have moved on since then: now I know what doesn't work.
And so, everything in my past
has become an explicit guideline for who I shouldn't be.

You can take it with you

I do not advocate consumerism.
but
Let no one say there is something defective with the massive consumption of objects that fulfill only fleeting desires.
A cup of coffee. A book. A movie. A music track. A cheese burger.
Yes, they may be manufactured cravings, by vindictive corporate entities.
But their consumption has come to represent something greater:
The struggle for what is desired, and what is wanted.
A reassurance that we can be more than the bare minimum.
and leave with more than we came with.
because
Although, by definition, we may live our lives
strictly with what we need,
to live on need alone
is merely surviving.

30th Street Station Philadelphia

a traumatic memory
It was a long time ago.
His hair was not white for example.
He was a boy
here on this street
it happened.
Maybe he couldn't stop the thing or make it unravel the way he wanted.
Surely, he lost
control.
But whatever the act
standing back on this spot, staring deeply
He realized what he could have done
if he had just stopped
and considered thinking.

Buildings are unnecessarily intimidating.
Angry even.
The trees shake and cower in fear of the mighty blocks and beams. And well they should. For they know that every year, the buildings become greater and their numbers larger, while of trees there are fewer and of smaller breeds. It is unlikely trees notice the presence of people at all. Just a steadily advancing force of brick and mortar, slowly surrounding them from all directions.

 

I try to picture the sky, but I can never get the framing right.
The fringes always get caught up in the printer belt, sheered off, severely dampening the affect of mid fall sunlight.
So lets pretend.
I’ll pretend to show you the sky and you’ll pretend to see it.

the inside of a dream.
Explosions with picks of iron expanding omni-directionally in slow frame speed..
One click. Exhale.
Two clicks. Pierced shards sifting in the lung sack, dribbling puddle of internal liquids mixing around in soft mildew retreating towards the exit drain.
Three clicks. Back to normal, proceed.
Four clicks. Its self indulgent destruction stemming from the insides and rapiding around organs like the outmost ends of waves, after a corner curling back on themselves. A look, a lift, a breath, and it all comes flooding back, like a respirator shoveling life back in through the mouth.

This was true love. They had been to a hospital, had their blood screened, pap smears, semen samples, they had done all the tests, and the diagnosis was unanimous. It was clinical true love. The trouble with love this pure is that tolerance develops at a sickening rate. It all starts with eye contact, and steadily moves to touching, hugging, hand holding, kissing. From there to insertion and intercourse, at greater frequencies with smaller intervals in between. But it doesn't stop, and withdrawal gets more worrisome, with cold sweats breaking out from even the slightest lapse in closeness, and panic attacks whenever direct eye contact is lost. The doctors were stumped, and suggested therapy, but the thought of sharing their intimacy with another was unbearable, and mutual jealousy kept the issue from being explored further. Then, as one of the doctors was pondering the problem, the solution presented itself as a pair of conjoined twins walking together in the park. The two lovers agreed it was the only way to achieve a higher level of closeness and so the attachment surgery was performed immediately.
For weeks the two lived with jubilance and complete contentment at their new arrangement.
But then came the cravings to know what the other was dreaming...

Someone told him that life was this train track. Depressingly linear. No room for inconsistency or deviation. A straight ride from two points. In disagreement he split the rail in to two, one leading east and the other west, and as the train came to the intersection, it derailed and ran itself off a cliff, effectively ending the metaphor.

There is a line of static people waiting at a bus stop. Waiting atop steps, staring into the street. Shifting erratically on the sidewalk, covering their eyes from the sunset. They can see into their apartments, because the side has been sheared off -a gaping freakish hole allowing us to view the interiors that we aren't supposed to- the work of worthless or unlucky construction workers. Either way, probably they're not here right now. Most likely- quiet and stone faced drinking coffee at a diner where the light shines directly down, creating all sorts of depressing shadows under the eyes and exaggerating skin creases. This crowd should look as depressed, but somehow, they're excited. Excitement. Brought right to your doorstep. A slaughter movie, slipped in through the mail slot. A phone call from the mysterious outline of a sexy female. A twice wrapped stick of dynamite, shoved into a rock corner, in a position just effective enough to do more than the job required. The fuse is set, and flint is clicked, and suddenly three dozen people get a fresh out look on life. If only I could have that much of impact. I like diner coffee.

grass construction workers out to mislead the public about the substantive nature of the ground the grow their food in. its really shipped in from overseas, where small children from needy nations knit it together from polymers and refurbished nike t-shirts. the woman who works at receiving whispers with open eyes, "Is it all true?" and the man with the impatient solid face rubs his eyes and mumbles something about bliss and ignorance. or bliss and fabrication.
bliss and polymers.

old city is a perpetual breeding ground for first dates and last calls. A reproductive slum for all the single cell anti social amoebas that squirm the streets with tails flicking spastically. Looking for the wrong guy or wrong girl to scoop them up and sodomize their brain with a meat cleaver. We should be so lucky. Will natural selection actually weed out the shallow unfit seas of unconscious corpses roaming the streets? Will they eventually dry up into the rotten cores of meaningless flesh that we see them as? Does god have a hand in balancing out this fucked up crumpled sports car that we call Friday night? The answer is no. No, no a thousand times. And we'd be better off if we didn't drown in the details.
The deep mascara driven eye sockets of girls with no home to go to plead on and on about their hopeless predicament. I'd be inclined to agree with them, and even sympathize, if there were just a dozen fewer of their kind.

This girl gives her girl friend's ass a firm smack, and I'm in love. It's unrequited love but I'll take it. Just to see your body flex upward, with arms and thighs aching to touch. But sadly you don't feel the same way, as your body makes its moves to far ends of the club, and the contrast which you gave to your surroundings fades out and everyone becomes the same thing. A sea of dancing contours, black opaque silhouettes, among a flashing strobing backdrop.

"lets turn up the ampage on his brain a bit." The doctor, somewhere out of vision, suggests.
His finger tips turn to mush and he's bleeding static.
His formless hands try to hold on to a railing, but the fingers(?) just gum together and the bar slips from them. He tumbles into the vibrating landscape and can't find his legs, just some mutual appendages hanging off him. Steadily, his body is blurring together, disrelating itself to itself. He watches as parts of him shift into other parts and he has become a disjointed sack of things, helpless in the hallway.
"Hmmm, I'd say that was too much..."
"Oh I agree, let me get him back up here."
He can feel knobs being turned, and a crust starts forming on his body, gradually hardening into legs and arms and feet and hands. Soon he is a self again. Not himself, because everything is brand new. But he can point, and be pointed at, and given that, what needs are there?

Her basic intentions were good, but wolves can hunt their prey without ever knowing it. The instinctual body movements and hand motions. The repetition of familiar word combinations. The scanning habits of the pupils. When the cognitive mind isn't in control, one wonders why intention should be brought up to begin with. The words still grind against the brain. They still cut through the emotional cortex with incisive precision. Regardless of intent, the suffering is the same.
And good intentions can still tear your throat open.

some days flick by so fast you're reading a flip book with single frame events picked out from the details. feeling is lost. people have blurry edges. the wind carries them away. life becomes a distraction.
other days grow roots and wedge themselves in the concrete, with violent vibrations rocking your center of gravity away from its resting place. the belligerent days refuse to go unnoticed, and they will hurt you if they have to.

Crowded bars. Where silence and noise accomplish the same ends. Squelching out any chance of connecting with a stranger. Scanning heads in the desperate search for a friendly face, or just a face. But when you look you only see the underside of shadows and their voices have packed into all the others so you can't make out a word.
100 backs are turned away from you- alone in a crowded room.

Japan is getting bombed, and we're getting trashed. Reggae music interspersed over military footage makes a surprisingly good soundtrack for a run of uninhibited binge drinking. With cluster bombs and jello shots, both signaling a kind of impending doom. A chaotic moment, everything jumbling together at once. The seconds slow, the world fades away. Unconsciousness takes over, friends and strangers, dropping to the floor. War is such a horrible thing. Alcohol is such a horrible drug. But we need them both to live. It's a truth: we need imminent death and unthinking stupidity if we are to survive.

collections mapped out and snagged on rough metal wires, skewered through crumbling wooden posts for the reading collection of thousands. regurgitated, recycled, the same thoughts flicking off the tongue through the pen onto paper and tacked up again like some amnesiacs private ritual he keeps forgetting he already did.
forgotten and repeated, times and times over.

It begins with blood. The music is turned on, and the scent of dancing wafts out into the streets. Then the sharks swim in. Girls with tight skirts and long legs flicker about in their seats, while their boyfriends talk softly and look oblivious. No one saw it coming. This is shallow water, and the scent of hard steps and dipped shoulders can be detected easily by the predators. They attack in packs, abandoning their escorts and surrounding their prey, grinding with long thrusting hip motions. The fervor heightens, and as the contact becomes more and more physical someone screams in sexual hysteria. Ooooh! The prey and the predators have become so entangled its hard to see who is attacking who. Both are fighting - no one seems to be resisting.
At the end of the night, the sharks return to familiar waters, but a dangerous flicker of the eyes can be observed. The chances of a second attack are impossible to predict.

Possibilities
Here I'm not at a club. With pounding music instinctively gyrating muscles. With a jungle of female hips and arms to brush against, passing from one part of the floor to the other. This did not happen. When 7 hot girls come up to you on the street, and one smiles through you and extends an invitation to come along? Of course the answer is yes! So why aren't I here? Here on the bar leaning eagerly into her face with a bottle in queue inches from my mouth. Here with the aroma of cigarettes and aphrodisiac perfumes rising up out of the dark wood stained floors. Her face is alive and fiery with octagonal reflections and cheap plastic laser light substitutes. Or it must be- From someone else's perspective. Someone else's bar tab. Someone else's awkward internal monologue, constricting dialogue inside his brain. Someone else's disappointment with the shallow insides of the cute girl with the misleading glasses. I'm not here because in my subconscious, I know this. But consciously, I'm still clicking through the possibilities.
Disaster.
Danger.
Regret.

Fire crept up from the inside of the earth and exposed itself to the sky. Extending in a molten spiral up into the clouds.

Attacked on all sides, the claws clicking out - jaws snapped wide. Scatter backwards up a vertical pole extending to air. Freedom safety, guilt, remorse. Sometimes, you get to the top, you wish you hadn't climbed all the way. Because now you can't get back down.

Staring up into the beast made his head spiral around his body. That queasy push, forcing its way around his intestine. It was coming right down on top of him, and he realized how hilarious it would be crushed by something he created. Another dead architect lying in the street.