September 27th. Thought the hots for you?

It's funny how one forgets.

Admittedly, it's been a few months—May, June, July, August, and most of September—since last time. I mean, shit. I realized this morning that I barely even remember what sex feels like (Ed.'s note: This is not strictly true.), so this should hardly come as a surprise. The child-like grabs, the hurrying for cover, the cursory glance. The reddening inflaming Lisa Robinson anger. The following minutes of self-doubt and all-consuming frustration. Blah blah blah.

And lest we forget, there were also the conversations in my head: "You see, there are three types of students, upon getting marks back. Type 1 sees his mark, understands that it corresponds to what he handed in, and why, and is satisfied. Type 2 sees her mark, becomes frustrated because she thinks she deserves better, and shoots over to the teacher to complain. Type 3, me, thinks he deserves better, but instead of complaining, says nothing and fumes about it for weeks on end."

Well, maybe not. I've got a packed schedule, anyway. Maybe Provigo will see fit to do both of us a favour and give me a happy medium of hours... because I certainly don't know how many I want/need. I guess one of the pros of being of two minds about something is that regardless of the outcome you have something (if you're an optimist) to be happy about.

(This is where you point out that I'm a pessimist, but nobody reads this, so I win the argument on the basis of democracy.)

Speaking of which... I hate patriotism with an idiotic fervour, but damn if I don't prefer living in Canada to living in the U.S. based solely on the way our federal electoral system works. My goodness.

Anyway. Apart from my constant workings on Windswept, and the ways I keep managing to increase the scope of it without increasing the target wordcount... all I have to worry about is keeping my daydreaming in check. Keep reminding myself that she's a bitch, and too old for me, and everything else ever goddamn. Ugh. I prefer writing about Windswept. It depresses me so much less. I have to stop getting myself into TV interviews for it, though. It's not not not not not healthy. And that was five nots for emphasis, not to make you figure out that a quintuple-negative evens out to a single one. Odds out to a single one. A bunch of words that sort of describe me. WHATEVER. More ugh. Here's a passage that I wrote recently that won't see the light of lj (at least, non-private lj) for a while. You can thank me later. *wistful sigh*

~~~~
Character breathed out. They were at a fast food joint somewhere. His mind was blurry. It was always hard to concentrate when he was feeling overfull. The summer was going strangely. The move was fractioning up his mind as much as it was his apartment. Perhaps they were mostly the same thing, anyway. Perhaps they always had been. Anna-Leigh was talking to him about Harry. He had been having difficulty, lately, making conversation. He wasn't sure whether or not she had noticed. He felt less and less interested in intellectualisms, arguments. Whatever. Something, somewhere, was going. He worried, running his fingers through his hair, feeling for the hole, hoping somehow frailly to plug it. His eyelids fluttered unconsciously.

"Yeah, he was telling me this... stuff... something about this short story he's working on. He said... he said it was going to be all in dialogue?" She made the sentence, awkwardly, into a question, as though asking him whether or not it made any sense at the same time as she was stating it. He frowned, puzzling.

"Isn't that just a play?"

"Well, yeah..." She hadn't considered this, but landed on her feet. "But, I mean, it's all in the intent, right? Plus," gaining confidence, "what you call it, how you frame it... influences how the audience reads it." She was throwing herself against his intellect. He smiled wearily at her and dipped his head to his straw, sipping, sucking, and nodded as he came back up for air.

"I guess."

He wondered where this was going. Was this the cliché, the dulling, that he knew about? Little pieces of him infinitesimally rubbing into the void, a rain of high-school dandruff slowly, over the months, taking effect? He took his fingers out of his greasy hair and pressed them against the dying, firm sadness of the table, looking for solidity. She was lost in thought. He studied the curves of her face, her beauty. She hadn't changed, nor had his reaction. It was still electric, there was still a spark, a shock. He was worried, though, whether this could keep meaning anything, could hold up and stock up and dam up meaning inside itself like a sponge, a bear-trap, for so long. And if it could, was it not, in some way, dangerous? Was she too much? He stopped and wondered. Well, was she?

And he looked at her, offhand. And she was. But he didn't say anything, not yet. If they had found a way to make cars run on water, a perpetual motion machine, would we know? Would they tell us? I've seen Primer. Do we end up keeping the big discoveries to ourselves?

He wondered.

September 13th. I thought the law.

I'm three days from being not-a-teenager-anymore. For a while there I worried that my guys—my guys, you know—weren't realistic as young twenty-somethings because of how much emotional drama they had. Well, each passing day proves them more and more possible, but maybe also more and more like me and not like anyone else. Move over, hacksaw. I am the new king.

I'm listening to new new music—Deathspell Omega, Feist, Titus Andronicus—and new old music—Gorilla Biscuits, HORSE the Band, Jay-Z, Pelican—and it's fun. I'm like an adventurer. The deepest, darkest Congo. Victoria Falls. Dr. Leunginstone, I presume? No, just a little hippo. Well, I'm not done making an ass out of myself, at least, publicly or otherwise. I guess I should eat more.

I woke up at 5:37. Today was my day to buy textbooks, art supplies, Peek Freans, and to sell my soul to Provigo and/or PA. Instead, sleep. No transactions recorded.

I did get the stones and the website use enough together to pull myself across the downtown core and into the deepest (not really) bowels of Place Montreal Trust. I placed my trust in some employees and came out heavied-down with the (hopefully) right stuff. Tomorrow, here I come. Three packs of Mike and Ikes and doing my best not to take a liking to anything.

It makes me sad that I considered suicide extensively (whoo ideation) before even mentally reaching "move back out next month." Maybe I really am as dumb as I look. I'll let you know when the jury gets back to me.

EDIT: I just dreamt I had 18 million dollars in credit-card debt. It is so good to be awake.

August 24th. Da Thought 3.

I'm floating, falling, flying out of control. It's past two, I'm losing it, no word from Concordia, no work on the horizon, no word count changes, nothing. It's all—all of it—in my head. I'm too (whooo) cerebral. You know what I'm talking about, pretty eyes. You know.

In M.I.A.'s Paper Planes video she's wearing a Ride the Lightning shirt.

I had this fantasy (I keep them, like old hockey cards, O-Pee-Chee, in the back of my mind) of getting to fuck an Indian girl with an adorably big nose and a Ride the Lightning tee. I don't know why but it was something a year or a year and a half ago, way before the video came out or probably I'd even heard the song.

The world is trippy like that sometimes, like rainbow coincidences and lightning on demand. All these things dropping out of the sky for me, almost makes a guy want to go back to believing in things. Almost.

And then long walks home and lucky, pretty eyes make it all crumble into forget grocery store's closed locked crumple into fear of failure fear of flying fear of trying.

We all know where this is going. I'm not going to ride this until the end. I get off here, this is my stop, goodnight.

August 5th. Thought, can we get a witness?

I haven't written (or read) anything in about a week. It feels disgusting. I don't know where it's come from but I want it gone. This job and these friends (neither of which really exist) and all these goddamn thoughts.

Tomorrow (today) is Biodome Double Pizza Bell Centre box office. Tomorrow (two days) is blankets lines rain Radiohead back home tired exhausted. And Thursday, maybe Jin and Sandy, maybe. Somewhere in there does Uncle Con get in touch?

(Discordant music interlude.)

Here's to my future, here's to no future. Here's to finishing behind. Hardons heartaches pistons piss-takes. Vipers and rare blood types. Still have to finish A Portrait and The Brothers. Still have to finish Day Sixteen. Still have to keep slogging. Clean out the sink, clean out my wardrobe.

Clean out my cluttered head.

July 27th. Thought and sold.

I wonder how much faith it's mentally safe to place on this story getting me what I want out of life. Two years from now, broken, a half-dozen or more rejection letters in hand, maybe 36 or so credits to my name at Concordia, will I quietly kill myself? Or have we moved past that? It's hard to tell if the writing's coming because I'm doing well, or vice-versa. Probably a bit of both. Even if I do finish it, though, and even if I finish it around when I want to, which is to say, early January, and if I edit it for half a year (God knows that will take some patience) before sending it anywhere... and if I get an agent early on in the process and get a book deal, there's still such a ridiculous gulf. Mexico, yes, sane. Tonkin, sure, no problem. This, however...

Well, maybe I'll learn how to swim, and things will go swimmingly. This is bull-horns-grab time, innit?

July 4th. Ink thought tests.

The air is all still in this place. Everything feels dead, though I know outside it'll be all too living for my livid lonely likes. A simple concept such as going out to get some food (two slices, piping re-heated) to still my prowling hungers turns into an epic quest. Huh.

It's been more than two weeks now. Fifty to go. I've read two books, though (The Children of Men and The Good Earth) so I'm a whole pile up on last-year-me. Maybe I can translate that into progress in other areas. I contemplated that last night, walking home. Maybe I'll come to love the mayhem. I'm already apparently pretty chill with talking to sans-abris (at least, when they force me to)... maybe in time I'll build up and tear down the respective walls I need to deal with regular passersby. Maybe I'll be better at phone calls. Maybe.

I've gotten some writing done—a short poem, some lyrics, some novelry, this blog—and had Dan over. Briefly I was competent under the spotlight. Now I've wasted two days fiddling, reading, hiding. I need to get over this, get into Pharmaprix and Canadian Tire and the Triada Corp. offices and all that shit. I need to get on the phone. I need clean clothing. I need, I need, I need.

Maybe Mats Sundin will sign a contract with the Canadiens after all. "Would you bargain your ways," Dan once asked me, "for a little taste of silver?" And I would, and I wouldn't. And well, is there such an one who would? And I know that yes, and also no. (At least I can tell my radicals apart, right?) So long as Marc Denis doesn't get the #2 job. Grabovski I can bear to lose, but Grabovski and Halak is too much.

Anyway. I have questing to do. It's like Lancelot's Armor: a solo quest, but easily winnable and it bears much fruit when it comes to dealing with problems. And off, and out I go, into the puny night, indeed.

June 1st. Just thoughting down some last minute notes.

I finally got some more writing done on Windswept. Christ am I bad. When I read that Chabon wrote 4000 words a week I kind of cringed. Way to not be an author at all, Alex. God knows the distance separating me from the Stephenie Meyers of the world is more than the Montreal to LA, a couple of years and being driven by desire. I think. (I know?) Fuck it. It doesn't matter anyway, that's not really where I want to be, but it still weighs on me.

So I got four paragraphs out. 410 words. I kind of like how it went. I might decide to keep this rolling. (I hope.) Writing's probably going to be my main thing six months from now. I'm going to have basically one friend, give or take, probably going to be spending chunks like 50 hours or something without saying anything meaningful to anyone or hearing anything in reply. Eating poorly, sleeping worse. Just me and my desire to get straight As. That is, if Concordia even lets me come back. If not, I go nuts. (I guess.) A year of work and a terrible novel and nothing else?

(Notice, if you will, that I just called it a novel. It is no longer a short story or novella or anything else. I need it to be a novel, I need it to be long and majestic and everything I have so far been completely unable to produce. Windswept is my saving grace. I told Dan during the winter I wouldn't kill myself so long as it wasn't finished. I need to keep writing (and I mean actually writing, not just putting it off indefinitely) until either it is good or I am. That is going to be my life from here on in.)

Maybe I will make enough money to start getting the tattoos I'm going to start dreaming feverishly of. "This is the number love. This is the letter fuck." And so on.

I'm not going to get into my other problems. Mostly everything sucks right now. I take great yet tiny pleasures in my music, in my felt-protected chair feet, in my stupid candy and my ugly, broken daydream fantasies about everything. Maybe tomorrow I'll wake up and get hit by a car when I first leave the house and be spared the rest.

On second thought, it's dad's birthday tomorrow. That would be kind of a dick move on my part.

POSTERITY EDIT: The 410 words swelled quickly to 1000+. I am not a failure. Also I ended up doing lots of other little edits here and there and adding some stuff from wsadds. So... on the whole... a very positive experience.

May 1st. What have I thought in my pocket?

On my way back home from Will's and watching The Aviator, I stopped on Claremont not far south of Westmount and pissed in an alleyway. Christ, it was magnificent. Then I walked over to my Royal Bank branch and deposited my mom's winter-coat cheque and floated on home.

Today's session with Jamie was interesting. This might not get me anywhere—it hasn't so far, but I feel like maybe he's still feeling me out a bit—but it's nice to have someone listen to me while I talk. I guess that's one of my main problems at this point. I don't feel comfortable telling anyone how shitty I feel about things. No wonder being my girlfriend is no fun. At least Jamie gets paid, and he only has to deal with me 50 minutes a week. On the other hand, he says "wizout wanting to..." and it makes me laugh. Whizz out. I dunno. Wizard?

I just watched Juno last night. I told myself I was going to wait until I had someone (you know, someone) to watch it with but that's going to take forever. I'll let Atonement be my waiting movie. Anyway, Michael Cera was fantastic and I enjoyed it a lot... so much so that I watched it with the director/writer's commentary on right afterwards. And... Olivia Thirlby is hella cute.

The Habs suck. It is frustrating to be a fan of theirs right now. It could be worse, I guess. I could be a Washington or Boston or Calgary fan. I guess all the other teams' fans have had a bit more time to get over their heartbreaks. Anyway, we'll be better next year, I think. With a core of these guys, maybe a free agent or two and some grit for the playoffs... who knows. We could make it to the third round, even.

I guess the post-Seder party malaise has died down a bit. It burns bright and then pooft there's no more wick to burn. I hope? I know that's not true. But it's just gonna be embers for a bit, I guess. Until next party. I wrote like two-and-a-half songs and I listened to Piazza, New York Catcher a lot and school is over so I can sleep whatever. Plus, the apartment monkey looks like it might be off my back. That would be super. Now for a job and a place. Presto hey chango, I'm functional. (Let's not get amibitious. Semi-functional. I still do my banking at 3 a.m., for Christ's sakes.)

I'm so torn as to whether I want to be more or less like Howard Hughes. Oh for a time when 352 miles per hour made you the fastest man in the world, and you could crash land in a beet-field without fear of rap jokes from Alex Manley.

P.S. Next time I'm out at 3 a.m. I think I might bring some sidewalk chalk and some poetry. No sense in sitting around not adding to the surrealism of everyone else's lives, right?

April 19th. Specks thoughting the horizon.

Regrets: I missed Paint It Black. That was terrible of me. I wish, of course, that I had someone, anyone, to go to shows like that with. Maybe the fault is my own for not asking anyone. Maybe not. But McDonald's and an OT win do not make up for a mistake like that.

Vlada is returning to Vlada. By which I mean: I can never seem to reconnect properly with her. Maybe it's something, maybe it's nothing. I have to try harder.

I'm being really bad at this tax shit. Bureaucracy is one of those things that scares me way too much to deal with. At least I can listen to The Loved Ones here and there and try to forget how tight my stomach is wound.

I'm not eating well. There's a bit of pudge, I think sticking out where my stomach used to be. I'm not fat, not by a long shot. Not even, I think, by "The Devil Wears Prada" standards. But still. I don't like it. Maybe Shirine is onto something with her "repressed anorexia" business. But: I'm afraid, deep down, of my father's post-teens weight gain, and it'll just be chickens—or, in this case, chicken wings—coming back to roost.

My loneliness doesn't help my awkwardness. The less I talk to other people the further I feel from normal when I do. And it always matters too much to me. I can't count how many times I construct conversations to improve the ones I messed up at. Maybe I'm just being overly perfectionistic.

I can't write Windswept for the life of me. God. I wonder how I always see myself as a writer. All I'm good at is coming up with cute little snatches of dialogue that I never remember long enough to type or write down. That and self-critical, soul-search blog posts.

(Oh, and the Habs suck giant monkey cock. But I guess I maybe should have seen that one coming. The number one part of being a serious nut about a sports team is you have to have a really ingrained sense of pessimism. So I'm good to go, right.)

There have been some positives, I guess.

I've been able to keep the apartment as a whole, and my room in particular, pretty damn clean.

The subletting business is going less badly than I expected it to. The superintendent's wife is bailing me out bigtime.

I got to see Brick, which is fantastic, and is now one of my favourite all-time movies.

(At this point the list hits a snag. I can't think of any other positives.)

No, I was right. That was all there were. Unless you count "still not starving despite complete and utter laziness due to the pity-in-the-form-of-money support from parents." Because I don't.

Well. That's all the pessimism-as-catharsis I can manage for tonight. Cheers.

April 7th. Got the thoughts for you.

I'm back to my old mistakes. I skipped both my classes today, and my poetry reading last night at O'Reagan's Pub (wherever that is downtown).

I've got my second psychiatrist appointment tomorrow. I don't know how that's going to go. I don't have much to say, except that I'm lazy and impossible to work with. Either as a teammate or as modeling clay.

I'm also wasting an afternoon I could be spending doing laundry, buying groceries, seeing Vlada, buying Paint It Black tickets, whatever, sitting around in my clean room with my unwashed clothes and my dirty body. Oh and also I need to pay rent.

To add to the list: I've written one, count it, one poem since I handed out my second package a month and a half or so ago, and I've made pretty close to zero progress on Windswept. I'm so glad I don't have any final exams to write or I'd have to be really worried. I guess maybe hopefully I can pull myself together for the final chapbook. God. I hate that I'm in a program where I have to make chapbooks. I hate stupid fucking workshops. I hate being scared to show up for class because I'm not willing or able to participate in honest and frank discussion of other people's work.

I wish I knew where this was going. I wish my birthday was midsummer. I could at least get a taste of being twenty before school starts (or doesn't) again. Eugh. I need a Trillian and a trip to Madagascar.

At least let me get 16 more wins. That would be nice.

March 26th. It's been a year. Thoughts?

I feel saner than I have in years. Not years, but. I guess that's what school does for me? At least, normal school. Like taking tests instead of writing poetry. Oh and also, I'm way too smart for my Linguistics class. Like I come in and be all "I drop science, mother bitches!" and the class be all "Oh Alex, even though you have only been to four classes previous to this one all semester and even though your studying for this test was, like the infamous Chappelle joke, bombed out and depleted... you still finished the test faster than everyone.*" Fuckin' right A, I did. Now, for naps.

Oh and also: what's with the four day break, NHL schedule? Laaame.

*Actually third, but the class is like 100+ people big so it's about the same.

March 24th. Thoughts in the dark.

Alternate title: "March 24th. Autothoughts, transform and roll out!"

I watched some movies. The Devil Wears Prada, Semi-Pro, Horton Hears a Who. I gave myself a haircut. Matt didn't invite me to his birthday party for me to not show. Maybe people are getting smarter. Tonight: Skittles and the Habs play the Sens. Me, fate. In that room like Keira and Matthew and just "shall we dance" bitchy-bitcheyes. And again I have my fake-confidence character, all "hell fucking YES I DID" on his chest and all "nine tymz" across his knuckles. Grarrr. A reminder: it could be worse. And another: You could be a character in Dawson's Creek. You may not deal with them well but at least you can deal with other people's mistakes at all.

Okay. Breathe.

March 21st. More thoughts.

My head hurts. The difference-gauze is fading. I'm back to the lab again. I need a job and something to keep me hopeful. And a 4-3-0 record, minimum. I can only hope Alexei Kovalev, in His wisdom, hears my prayers. Shit, it is Easter. So sue me for the religious crap. I'm going to take a nap. Let's all hope I wake up better.

I need to live in fiction for a year or more.

March 18th. Thoughts.

I'm too stupid for my own good. I have to write this all in one go because god knows I can't handle opportunities to edit. Nothing will ever be perfect enough but I feel like getting something off my head.

I haven't blogged in ages. I don't really know why I stopped, or why I started, or why I'm re-starting. It's all a matter of the little unimportant idiocies that added up build a life. My only hope is the same reason why the slowest person in a trio (in this case, Gimli) doesn't get left the fuck behind: the adaptation of pace to correct perceived deficiencies as they develop. And maybe something about cinematic intra-film logic. But then we could always blame John Ronald Reuel first, right?

Part of that of course is that Legolas and Aragorn slow down and stop occasionally. Does the same hold true in life? The jury's still out. "We've got our rope neckties. The light fixture, shedding sawdust, keeps us hanging on."

So I'm angry. Every mannequin with dyed hair and decent shoes is a life-raft. Too bad I'm no Szut. Or at least, if I am, I'm dying in the ocean without remorse. Does the fact that I got to fly a fighter plane make it okay? Or is it enough to get shot down by the Tintins of the world? Is reading fiction any stupider than reading one's life into it? And does the quality, or the maturity of the underlying thematic elements, factor into that?

Fuck. I was thinking, earlier. I think I like being confused by art because it means I don't have to bullshit my perception. "The Bank Robbery" by Steven Schutzman. "The Benefits of Thinking Out Loud" by A Wilhelm Scream. "Paprika" and parts of "Manhattan." The shit in the new collection at the MAC by Geoffrey Farmer. I can just sort of lose myself in the beauty and not psycho-analyze it to death. I'm fighting growing up.

Is that going to come up, in my therapy sessions? How old I feel? Or rather, how young I feel? Am I going to feel bad that I can talk about myself and my perceived personal problems for hours and hours on end? Will whoever has to listen to me talk about the stupid things I say to his or her friends over dinner in black and white a few nights later? I do and I don't hope so.

Am I ever going to be able to keep writing my poetry? Will "Windswept" ever take shape? And is it okay if it doesn't? What about submission and both of its meanings? And on that token, will I ever be able to write a sestina? Hopefully we'll find that one out sooner than later. But that leads to another question: Will I ever be a good student?

And will that ever even matter? So.

So I'm angry. Apparently that's obvious. I guess my obviousness filter is completely off. I just want honest opinions from everybody about myself. Is being that self-involved analogous to insanity? I'm afraid of the consequences of letting myself stop long enough to be studied. If it's not medical then I'm out of a crutch and I'm out of the illusion that I'm functional regardless. At least that means I don't have to consider how much brain shit is like or unlike "a broken elbow" or whatever stupid shit Dr. Karayan told me. I don't want to suggest that my elbow isn't as complicated as my brain (it isn't) but come on. My elbow doesn't govern all that much, in the end.

Anyway. It's late. The last track has stopped playing. I wish I could write fiction this fast, these days. I wish I could make what I'd just written fiction, even. That would be something. If only I could exorcise my demons by writing about them.

If that were possible then probably nobody would know how to write. You gotta pick your battles.

In my dreams I'm giving a reading in the basement of the MMFA and all the questions are getting asked by people I know. I only ever want to be famous to impress people I've already met. Maybe I should be a fireman after all.

My dreams would all be about pulling myself out of burning buildings. Hah.

9 - veterans' day

"so next time it's three a.m. and just on a whim you want to skate or drink or swim in the soft pink light of the dim and fading memories we once shared, give me a call, let me know you care." he waited for six weeks, got no availability. by now it was the end of december. he's afraid of this week. god knows he hates his misery. by now it was the end of his temper. "one of these days" he lies to himself, "someone will put me back on the shelf." nine months on and it's gone to his health. he stares at the moon and closes his eyes. it might be too soon but he knows his sighs. he's sick of the climb. three ticks and it's time. his life flies past in a flash. "so here's a picture of me for next morning's papers. you can stick it between the sex and mourning fakers." 'cause by this point he's out of joint and he's got no missed calls and hardly any mixed messages. no one noticed all his party envy. it's a mess and it's more than he can take. he's fading fast and breathing shallow. more than he can fake. stuck in the past, and he's too callow; just not meant for the rough and tumble. he found a nice cozy bathtub and filled it up warm. he'd always trip on cuts and stumble. it's time he made something useful out of himself. a war always ends in peace. it's best that a life should end in death. he's done with the games and the being left out. a tug at the blade, a look upwards. about the light, the only one still lit, he paused, exhaled, and said, "kill it."

8 - why me? (supersoak that hoe!!!)

love is just the preamble to heartbreak, and life is just delaying the inevitable. some things must be free, and those who start late can't slide in, but we say it's destiny. it's all bull. so here's a picture for next morning's papers, a mixture of death and warning vapours, i wash my hands of this affair. i'm sick and tired of being self-aware. so spit, spit, spit, 'cause this is it. spit, spit, spit. i'm sick of this skit. so snick, snick, snick, and steal a kiss. spit, spit, spit. i'm sick of this shit. there's a gooseneck hole in my heart. it's where you sit, cold, in my art. there's a loose-part hole in my neck. it's where you start calling my act and my bluff and my love all ridiculous. i'll rip it up. this has gone on for far too long. it's gone. i'm left and you're wrong. right around this time last year, we were duo-eschewing holiday cheer. next year, right around this time, you'll have a winter free of my stupid rhymes. last year, right around this time, i was starting to think that you could be mine. right around this time next year, you'll have to walk alone, 'cause i won't be here. so slit, slit, slit, and kill a kiss. snick, snick, snick. i'm sick of this shit. spit, spit, spit, 'cause this is it. slit, slit, slit. i'm sick of this shit.

7 - "into the air like a yellow balloon."

street stays shy, but the cold air hits like a reminder. these days i don't even know where the fuck to find her. kiss kiss, bang bang. drop dead. drop dead. it's missing, gang. drop dead. drop dead. at the very least drop anger. no? caught up in rooftop anchors? it's your loss. it's your cost. it's your debt. he's heard it all before. i'll be more direct. "hi, kids: it goes like this." kiss this gang bang. drop dead. drop dead. hit it and ran. drop dead. drop dead. but today i'm making motion to sail. i'm going to leave this one-man island behind. so gone are the days of hoping you'd fail and knowing you'd be the one that i let see my insides. it's high time we fly; it's high tide. so let's let go and bellow so that they know a yellow sun is rising. in a few minutes it'll be high noon. i'm done despising. gonna close my eyes, inhale. it's my due time.

6 - flesh

he thinks he's god in the flesh. she drinks these gauze-in-defence lies that he spits. he's just a chickenshit. he's just dreaming of her leaving. strip tease. she sings about being. he can never grab ahold of months. they always pass too fast. she can never only hold him once. days always have to amass in the end so they pretend no amount of time means anything. he's out of rhymes. she's everything but pretend. she'll leave eventually. it's last call, and that's all. he's just dreaming of her leaving. strip these feelings of all meaning. soon as she's got in his flesh, she's gone in a flash, and that's all. that's all.

5 - semper fugitive

i said, "kill the lights," he said, "hit the switch." i said, "thrill delights," he said, "hit this bitch upside her face." it's such a disgrace. but i did it anyway. and i didn't even say, "hit the lights." and he didn't even say, "kill the switch." instead, i said, "time, it flies." and he said, "kill this witch." and i did. i ruined it. upon waking i made a vow. keep on taking, i'll make it out. i'll be on the run forever. it doesn't bother me. my heart is only as head-strong as the rest of my body.

4 - misty

spending these winter nights with this miss-splintered sight, i blink my eyes, and i drink my cries. guess cold and sadness are just in vogue. all the memories that lust invokes. i cough and swear, and my lungs are bare. two months and forever. he's stumped and i'm severed. funny how things work out—i was the vain one and he was the wildlife. hum it, or sing about another pain: when am i gonna smile like the way i used to just last year, when i was fucking honest? these days i guess you must not hear when i alone will call you on it. spending these winter nights with this miss-splintered sight, i spit and tear at this heart i bear. two months and forever. he's stumped and i'm severed. funny how things work out—i was the vain one and he was the wildlife. hum it, or sing about another pain: when am i gonna smile like the way i used to just last year, when i wasn't so haunted? these days i guess you must not hear that i am all you fucking wanted.

3 - rip movie nights/dead poet's sobriety

she keeps trying to smile harder, but he's every time a firestarter, feeling more and more like a tired martyr. he's angry for no fucking reason but even though she's always in season, well, he just can't keep his heart from seizing up. he works so much for so little to no touch. he's so brittle. she keeps her attire formal and smarter than the next girl. he sleeps while on fire, normal, and heart-burns when the sex works its way right out of such a bright picture. makes him wonder why he goes on every night hanging at the light fixture waiting for her slightest come-ons. he's a 'no-downers, no-uppers' case who never uses capitals. she can't slow down her 'so-outer-space' blues, and her youth is passing slow. she's wasting it on him. minute by minute by minute. she's wasting her life with him. the days go by and he's still in it. he flushes. "so, what do you, with armour, uh, plan on doing now?" she doesn't know what to rue. the camera pans. she's climbing out.

2 - not one but two pairs of pliers

i'm forever going to picture us as we never were: happy and in love. trusty and so mature. clapping, hand-in-glove. is that wrong? so lock me up and swallow the key. it'd be more or less par for the course. so, like me, i'll keep wallowing see; you can be whore, or dress up for the remorse. it's so wrong. so kiss me deadly, risky red meat, whiskey when we, tipsy, set free all of your black doves. all that you hacked off. i'm hollow, you're packed up. leaving. it's autumn, that makes sense. me, then, kissed god, and back breaks end. hiss. so long.

1 - november pain

hold on a sec, just need some rest and relapsation from this pace that's such a maze and gotta keep the music playing so i can't hear the sounds always emanating from your room at the end of the hall, the sex and the crying and all the phone calls, the goodnight fuck and the judas-miss. my fistfight luck that you dismiss. just wish i wasn't in stasis, in places that her memory erases. drowning in bathtubs that won't drain, sounding off dead loves that don't stain. it's enough to make you stop and think and drop and drink your way to the floor on the way out the door. go ahead. call me a whore again. i'm just in it for the rent money. my landlord can't fix this dent but he can give me those weary looks i was wearily looking for. swallow these teary rooks. what was she really looking for?

part two of day four

Character sighed and walked back to his room. His life was a swiftly sinking gannet. If only he could get the oil stains out of his eyes. He blinked a few times and pulled thumb and forefinger from his temples to the bridge of his nose, ruffling pink manhole covers on the way. It was a mess. He was far too much one for melodrama anyway, but it was still a mess. He wished it wasn't always two or three in the morning. It was too hard to think, and the refrigerator hum, and the sink drip, and

He woke up the next morning. His computer was still on, and Rushmore was still in the open tray of the DVD player. There was a grease smudge on the top side, but it wasn't quite worth either cleaning up or mentioning upon return. That was just the way of the world. "So you're not attracted to me. C'est la vie." Anyway the guy at the video rental place was a bit of a dick. Character lulled down the hallway, hardly touching the floor, feeling pulled slightly by something behind him and a few feet to his upper right. There was no mail. It was a Saturday, of course. Saturday morning. Afternoon. What time was it?

It was not until a few days later that Character and Analae first talked. She was putting a sock on her left foot, pulling it up her calf, and Character, again, was stepping back into the apartment from checking the mail. There was a package for him, a blue and black houndstooth scarf that he had ordered online some weeks prior. Her other sock was a different colour and her cheeks were somewhat flushed. She glanced from him, to his package, and then to the walls.

"Are you the uh the guy who wrote this stuff?"

Character was startled a little. "Yeah that's me."

"Yeah cause I asked Harry and he said it was one of his roommates and that it was probably the skinny one. I uh wasn't sure if you were more or less skinny than your other roommate."

Character nodded.

"I mean I haven't really seen him." A breath. "Yet." Another. "I mean I don't mean that you're too skinny or that it's a bad thing or that

Character raised his right hand, half in protest, half in absolution. He wasn't used to much dialogue anymore, but deep inside he knew it didn't matter how skinny he was really. He nodded blearily.

"But yeah... I read it all last time I was over. It's really..." she paused and lent to her voice a certain gravitas "interesting. I mean is it original?"

"Yeah. Um. I don't know. It just sorta came to me one night. For all I know I was just channelling some eighties tv show or something. You should copy a line or two and google it just to make sure."

She adjusted her hair. "I did. Um. I wrote it all down." She bit her lip. "Last time I was here. I was just so impressed. I fell in love with it a bit and then I thought i mean what if the landlord comes in and orders you to paint over it? Or something dumb like that. And then the next time I come back it's gone forever. I'd just keep remembering it at random times for the rest of my life and wishing I'd written it down. And i thought about that and it made me want to cry like a stupid eight-year old girl. So I copied it down right then and there so I could have it... you know... concretely. I didn't think to google it though." Another pause. "Although I suppose it could have been... not ... written by you... and still... not on the internet." She half-smiled, seemingly unintentionally. The wildlife guidebook of the wallflower. "It's really good, though." In Character's head "Ooh La La" started playing again. That song never put out. A piano melody like that, and a two-rhyme chorus. Pah. She half-smiled again. "Does it have... a title?"

Character blinked and turned his head a little. "Yeah. It's called." Again, a pause. "Uhm. 'What" He pointed at the closed door behind her, "are you doing with a guy like him?'" Again, a half-smile, this time with the other side of her mouth. She turned her face down a little, then brightened up and faced him.

"I like being contradictory." She leaned in and kissed him quickly on the cheek, reached behind him, and opened the door. "Well. Goodbye then."

As she was opening the front door to the building, Character called after her. "At least I had the balls not to make a dick joke of that!" and she laughed in a way that set off the marble floor of the entrance way. He closed the door with the space in between his shoulder blades and leaned on it, wistfully. "C'est la vie." he muttered to himself, and part of him was sad because it felt more trite than anything. He sauntered back to the bathroom to shower. "Shoot me on the lips. Kiss me in the face." In the tub he sat crouched in the fetal position for a few minutes before actually washing himself. There was red, frizzy hair in the drain so the water slowly licked up his toe-inlets and the thick veins on the top of his feet. He wondered about wrinkling, but not about aging. He'd never figured on living long enough to grow old. By the time he was done, Antimony had woken up, anyway, and was knocking on the bathroom door. So it goes, huh.

to something permanent

it kills like pink elephants. it rings like pill telephones. false or not at all. all sore, caught, and i'll waste my days away like this. i'll waste my ways. a day like this? call me a dumb waiter, all i have on my hands is time and signs. call-up—a scrum player—but i love her demands and diamond eyes and she hates my dying sighs. i'll read, i'll redial and speed-wile while speeding around in circles. i'll bleed in the ground she hurdles with such grace, lips, marchpane, a starch pace in this stark race. with pea-coat kisses and remote misses i'll touch faith in such places, lose face. i'm bruised, tasteless and from the landing banged up. please take my hand, don't hang up.

from sleep

dear me: by the time you get this letter you'll be free, and i suppose it's for the better. you need sleep, but these dreams will never be clean, or, for that matter, stop getting wetter and believe me, you'll never get her sweet screams or even the measly pleasure of getting to bed her mean streets. drums beat to something permanent: the numb deeps or at least a burning end. come, steep in something permanent. unclean but at least you're born again. her gleam's peaks, her mean streaks. you teen freak, you weak fiend, you keen creep. you speak? please. get yourself back together. sincerely, your indebtor, real me.

day three: redemption & exemptions

Character was drawing red exes all over the calendar. It was September 4th. He wasn't quite sure where, or why, all the time had gone. And even though it all went wrong, he though to himself, I'll stand before the lord of song with nothing on my tongue but hallelujah.

No. No. That was a lie. There were criticisms, too. He was justifiably bitter and cynical. He searched for a meaning, a reason. Was it Fall already? It wasn't, of course; not for another 17 days. But still. He never paid as much attention to equinoxes and solstices as he did to calendar pages. In his mind, his days were numbered, and every new month meant ripping away the dead husk of the old one, replete with arrow wounds where X had marked a spot of misery or misfortune — or maybe just misremembering.

Last night he had ended up on the phone with a girl he knew from high school. They talked until all the plumbers and magicians were at home, safe in bed from wracking self-doubt and dreams of career suicide. He could never quite figure what they saw in each other. He had started, as a way to escape a conversation he was too bored not to have, to write, blindly flying across a spare piece of lined paper that had been lying within reach. This had not let up overnight. He was writing everything, everywhere. By now the September page had been filled to bursting with his thoughts and his exes. He contemplated stutteringly turning the page to continue on with his work, but thought better of it. Time was inconstant enough, making a lunatic ass of himself whenever sanity sought to control him, without obnoxiously speeding through the remaining months of the year in a sad fit of excess. He wasn't even writing, he was dimly aware, anything worth reading. Just —

He gave up and went to answer the doorbell. He didn't recognize the face behind the peephole. It was solemn, unsmiling. He wasn't in the mood tonight. Tonight...

Tonight he was in the mood for dancing. For painting. For something. For anything. Tonight he was in the mood to transcend everything and go straight to fifth base. His birthday was in a few weeks. That was reason enough.

A fly buzzed furiously by. This one was alone, and smaller, than the ones that had visited during the summer. Like a death throe from the greater entity of flies, a desperado that refused to land. He laughed at himself for not really making sense. It was reason enough.

a city visible but un-scene

blow a kiss and stow your hiss away, i won't bite anymore. 'cause it's saturday night prayers and sunday morning lights. and now i'm dumb from this plastic crap riff-raff shit that drowns my steps and thoughts. and now i'm getting hot. i'm so hard to turn off. a quiet "can't," a little lie, the riot tents, the longest lines. i need you to need me more than you need this. i've seen you less greedy before. can't you leave it alone? i should have known. walking off, feet rotting the dirt. i'll remember, i'm just meant for fucking off, feet caught in the hurt. i'll remember, i'm just meant for following the crowd, swallowing my proud anger and your refusal to apologize. if you still do i'll call it nice instead of off. that's the only way you blow me anyway. but after all this is done, who would you rather be? the loner or the one bemoaned? oh, seriously. you're gonna make mistakes, you know. eventually. shake your hips. take your lips back, they're not mine anymore. now it's saturday night dares and sunday morning slights. and now that all this is done, who would you rather be? the beater or the broken-boned? be serious, baby. you've gone and made a mistake now. pretend you see. and come on, baby, talk to me: after all of this is gone, who would you rather be? the seagulls, or the ocean foam?

a long time coming

It was late at night. The hour at which taxis alone, taxis and stragglers, and early early-morning wakebirds mistakebirds, ride the streets. Mostly just taxis.

Character was listless relentless lackluster all over some stupid parkbench, tackling his fear of the dark by playing into its hands. Outside dark was easier to deal with than inside dark, in any case. He drifted in and out of being tired, watching the flicking lights slide by. 485-8585. There's always someone who needs to get somewhere, somewhere. He zigged/zagged through markets and demands bullshit. Gravity was bearish. He was a blow-up float in his own tickertape parade. 7 3/4. 7 1/2. Somewhere in there was his apartment. His concept of home was so fractured nowadays. The costs rose, slowly, steadily, like taxi meters. His wallet was dead and stuffed with empty. He hummed

i did my best, it wasn't much.
i couldn't feel, so i learned to touch.

Across the street, the lamppost bathed him in a sickly light. i've told the truth, i didn't come all this way to fool you. Somehow, there must have been a gap between the glass and the metal,
yeah even though it all went wrong, i'll stand right here before the lord of Song, flies had obviously gotten in.

Their dead corpses, wings and not much else, of course he thought, who needs rationality when you can fly, perhaps this is the logic behind the non-invention of flying cars, had pooled together into a crocodilian sort of face. It shed no tears but light.

Oh to be so great. A long thin metal tail, and jaws composed of decaying mandibles. He was sweaty. with nothing on my lips but hallelujah.

He was in the mood, he realized, for something. Were he but a newcomer to this town, he shuffled, he might ask a taxi driver to take him, "downtown, where all the action is at" or some such nonsense but he wasn't really smart enough to play that dumb. Thoughts fluttered at him like moths, clustering and flustering his naked, cluttered, random body. As they alit, wings aflitter, they fried. His rashness stood out against the darkness and to it they came. He wanted eightballs, highballs, speedballs, powerballs. He wanted handholding maintenant. Harder better faster stronger. He started singing again, getting up and measuredly falling eastwards, though how quickly he could not tell. you say i took the name in vain. i don't even know then name, but if i did, well, really, what's it to you?

there's a blaze of light in ever word, he gasped for breath, it doesn't matter which you heard, the holy or the broken hallelujah.

In earlier years he might have felt sorry for the crocodile-mouth dead flies, but this was before he moved into the apartment. This was, he supposed, one of the pitfalls of shopping for a place, it's difficult to encounter all the possible problems that might arise living somewhere in a quarter-hour. One such possible problem was the existence of very large houseflies. He no longer trusted dark spots unless he was wearing his glasses. Frequently they would start to move. They were easy enough to kill; their continued existence brought out a sort of animal rage in the roommates, and a repeated banging of something papery, light and yet — they didn't get the newspaper, which Character sometimes regretted during scrambles to find appropriate weaponry, although the BestBuy flyers that always seemed to clog up their mailbox made decent enough substitutes — heavy and worthless enough to use for fly-killing, against a wall. There was always blood. So far as they could tell the flies did not bite or sting but they did bleed. Parts of Harry knew this was only to make the roommates feel guilty for their dirty deeds. The blood raised them up, made them human. Unsurprising, then, that they were so maddening in their refusal to disappear entirely. And so whack whack whack whack you goddamn motherfucker whack the roommates lost their sympathy for various families of Insectidae — not that they were particularly fond of them to begin with, of course.

And like this, wholly unsteadily, he made his way across the fourfivesix a.m. streets, as grey as the pavement he walked and twice as cracked. He was looking for a fix.

Overhead, the sun unfurled, heavenly, westward, though, how quickly, he could not tell.

the fighting temeraire

i'm prince rainiest the third. in a rinse-rain he kissed the word "tomorrow" and the number "11." his sorrow became dumber and leaden and fell away by pieces. until a day when she says "stop," keep going. it's the only way to stay sane these days; drops keep growing and plowing their way down my "please" face. they form a crown around my shoes, a smattering of "whatsamatter, kid?," a worn-up down that surrounds my dues, and splattering an "i don't matter" king. but i'm just prince rainiest the third. to evince pain he just demurred and turned his face away. no yearnings came today, he'll have to wait 'til tomorrow at eleven and borrow a mask, and a ring, and a throne, and some grace for a task where he'll sing for a bone and his place and the key to the royal coffer for he can't take his thoughts up off her. for a kiss he'll dismiss all of his manservants. he'll lean in with a grin and a face that's nervous and hope that she'll acquiesce to float and feel happiness.

lo-fi

like a steamship with only words to live, we gobble, gargle and then burn the midnight oil to piss. we're kept hanging on by pocketbook mistakes. come home to bed to find a pick-locket just took the drapes. so we keep drumming, waiting for whatever's coming and the last thing that gets summoned is the always heat of the moment. can you tell me why i feel so hoarse? i can't stop ponying up tears from the lint-encrusted depths of my eyes. can you tell me why i feel no remorse? i want to love 'em and leave 'em but my throat always gets stuck on goodbyes. the water never washes anything away. the rust just keeps building up. and i never sleep either, at least not until you're away. the lust is all that's keeping us together in my mind. i know it's ill-defined through the haze that cloaks my eyes but i could have sworn i saw a dagger in your alibis. you think you look good while smoking, and i look good in mirrors. you are my queen but i am no king, and (no jest) i fucking revere us.

marshmallow bananas

it's high time for high tide to hogtie the tongue-timed. she chimed in but i couldn't hear her over the rhyme din and the leak spin; i couldn't get near her. it was a weak win. a pause. did you mean this? a cause? please. have you seen a kiss romantic as that? slow-dancing, is that what i think it is? not what i think of this, but what this thinks of me. abet this sick story. we want to vanish to venice, see how deep the seine is. i wanted to be an actor; went through life actin' it, but if the eyes are the windows to the soul, then the mouth is the door and i've got a foot in it, and i'm about to swallow it whole. i'll take a long walk with some short-sighted peers. the last man to yell "abort!" died in fear. these are rough times for tough guys around here. in a town where fluff flies you'd best believe huff lies around here. my ears are ringing off the hook. we'll make this thing by the book or by crook. we want to vanish to venice, see how deep the seine is by the book or by crook. not what this thinks of me, but what i think of this. wanna bet? this is for me. i know it is. fuck every prick history. i know this is for me.

writing childhood hockey again

Character was in the hallway, when Harry emerged eventually, drawing patterns on the wall. Not in or obtrusively. At ankle level. Little black lines here and there. It was almost cute. He was reminiscing about his childhood. He'd grown up in a bad neighbourhood. Riding his bike, training-wheels-less, through sidewalk cracks and dogshit, dodging ghetto gepettoes and drugs that he hadn't at the time realized were there. I don't think he realized, back then, the importance of any of it. He was just being, in that way children are. The poverty was just life. It never really affected him. Then his parents moved a little to the north. The mean streets of Westmount were just a wholly different type of cutthroat. Old blood, old money. He didn't believe in ghosts, not then not now, holy or otherwise, although he did like them conceptually and in songtitles when they meant memories and forgotten feelings, trading places like fading faces, but Westmount was definitely a ghost township if ever there was one. The façades. Oh god, the façades. They were everywhere; brick, make-up, chequebook, fender, fuck fuck fuck. Everything. The smiles were wanton and rampant and everyone was up to his neck in self-righteousness. He made it through, though. His out had been hockey. He hadn't responded to any ropings-in, any accusatory, finger-pointing posters. I want YOU to waste your youth skating in circles. No, he'd seen another poster entirely. Tight fingers sink gunslingers. Dead or alive, he wanted to be a goalie.

He'd skated down, I guess, between the pipes. There was no time to tap any remorse code messages on the red steel, his mom had put the pads on the wrong legs at first and had had to go through them, strap by aching strap, loosening, removing, and then redoing. He'd barely made it out on time. He probably stopped the first shot he faced, and the second, and maybe the third and fourth and fifth. He probably let a few in but came out of it feeling that kind of kiddy giddy high that creates behavioural patterns. And voilà: he spent a lot of his youth skating in circles around the defensive zone face-off dots, waiting for something, anything, to come his way. A metaphor, if you will, for his problems later on in life. There was never enough adversity for his tastes. You figure after a while someone like that's bound to do something stupid like race an oncoming forward to the puck at the blueline. And whether or not he makes it there first, and whether or not he sprawls the right way and miraculously knocks the puck away, and whether or not the forward misses the net anyway, he decides to try it again, maybe. Maybe. It happens.

a few paragraphs

They had stopped getting the newspaper a month or two earlier. Current events weighed on Character. The cost weighed on Antimony’s wallet. Harry never read them enough to even take them lightly. A silent consensus (of sorts; as you might have guessed, this was the only kind of consensus the three ever arrived at) was reached. It stopped coming. They found new ways to occupy their mornings.

Harry slept in more. Character worried more. Antimony went in to school earlier. They were an odd company, the id, the ego and the alter ego. A sittragicom of sorts. None of them had the balls or the time to write a pilot episode, though. Character had half-heartedly tried to make a pilot light joke once or twice, but neither of his roommates had laughed. It happens.

This particular avant-meridian caught the trio sleepily and solemnly unaware of a terrorist attack that had gone on in some far-off corner of the western world the night before. The mourning and patriotism were just rearing their geary heads. There was a television, I suppose, if you could call it that. The only thing they saw on it was dust, and not from very far away, either, so the roots, mixed-dead-language, were both shallow and meaningless here. The radio, too, was silent. They were cut off from the world, awash in an island of silence, lies and liaisons with telescopes and stargazer lilies. They did not function like normal people.

In this spirit of abnormalcy, Antimony went jogging. Whenever he went off wandering and started wondering his mind would go money laundering. His thoughts were easily the most valuable ones the apartment produced. He had a career ahead of him. They lived in Montreal, under the shadow of the very summit of veracity, but he had better places to go. Truth concerned him only so much as it could be used as a means to an end. And so he was a friend to the fiends and did nothing to curb cocaine use. He let the grunge build up when it suited him. And when it didn't, he went jogging. He reminisced, from under his jetset black hair, about Character. A younger, fresher-laced, straighter-faced Character.

As fans tie fantasies, like Hermesian wings, to the ankles of their heroes, so, in his blundering, did this Character tear asunder the sundry tundra of his hundred hungry minds. The stress of his teen years was too much to bare his skinny hips and awkward ribs to the world. His pregnant, penitent, solemnly raging desires went unnoticed. In stations of the metro, in grocery store checkout lines, he was cloistered up inside. His dry split lips spilt no tales, his effusive veins moaned in vain. His walls were unbreakable. He was a fortress, constantly under siege. From the inside. I sincerely wish it had been resolved in a battle. The Battle of Stalingrad rather than Leningrad. I don't know. For his sake — he loves grandeur and artifice — it should have been a crack bang powhatan pow-wow. An explosion of feathers and anti-aircraft guns. Takka takka takka tik tik tik takka takka. Drums and the most intense high you ever hat. It sort of diffused. Like a crowd in a lobby somewhere. The agonizing slowness would have killed him if the siege hadn't starved him, fractionally, to death already. It happens. Noms de plume are too easy to come by these days, anyway, to say nothing of the guns of the never home. Maybe it had been for the better. But he had changed, he had changed, slowly, impurely, he came into his shaky own.

This exercise-as-catharsis conception was not unique to the tallest of the three. Character had a punching bag in his room. As they lived in an apartment, it was not bolted to the ceiling, but lay on the floor in a corner. Every now and then, in fits of rage and self-hatred, he would beat his impertinent and unimportant fists against it uselessly and collapse, panting, on top of it, the way he might ride a pummel-horse, chest heaving and galloping, legs abandoned to the breeze behind him, arms wrapped around a head no doubt left in someone's bed somewhere. In French class once he had meditated on the irony of the horse's head in the capo's bed. Maybe an alternate universe culture mob boss would receive the heart. The head was pretty useless anyway. All that came of it were thoughts and coughs and no days off.

For his part, Harry walked the length of NDG nights, bathed in calmly neon lights. Nocturning of tables meant nothing anymore. The night was practically as bright as the day. Modernity, the future, had, like it did in so many situations, blurred the line between black and white. Defibrillators and such. Inter-racial couples. Ha. He paced like a clock, like a ticking time bomb that will never ever explode through crackedpavement streets and immigrant apartment complexes, rife with inferiorities and gods. He saw no one, and was seen by fewer still.

it takes a planet of billions to hold us back

bare hands and naked eyes, my pickup lines are really compact. broken glass and raking sighs, my fuck-up fines are chilly and cracked. i'm axing my fears away as fast as i can hit 'em. you're taxing your "heres" and may's as slow as a quicksand victim. i put the online in nonlinear. you put the "i'm fine" in "not this, dear." but we're so good at talking it out. sad candles, flames and steam. in the hood and stalking with clout, mad handles, game, and a gleam in my grills. end my ills, s'il te plait. got hell to play, a mile left to race, but a smile on my face. i'm a wind and i'm crushing. you won't rescind but we're not rushing. i'm a misanthrope, you're a liberal. i'll try to kiss and rope you in. pivotal lines go unheard. i'll sit and wait and watch our minds intertwine and grow a cure.

cut the fuck up

still stuck in still hives, drowning in your dust moats. ill-will fucking still cries, hounding friends in rust coats. the wind winds through these codex passages. i'm moving on to better and stronger things. the sand sings. you need no ex-pats in this. absence makes the heart go wandering. had enough of this shit-taking, bit of hit-or-mistaken. cry and the world laughs at you, laugh and you laugh alone. die and cenotaphs laugh too, pass on? you'll have to groan and shudder like the cold mettle i know you don't possess. sinking in the north-atlantic. hands, upper, break the "i'll settle." i know you're in distress, but i can't stop being shy and frantic. don't acknowledge me, i don't need apologies. i'll keep up my never-ending runs. please don't start my lips from coming undone. and now you see him, now you don't want to. how museums turned from a yawn to a blast to a wreck, titanic: hold fast to my neck, don't panic. it's women and children first, and you're both of. keep winning and you'll be cursed. please don't ghost us.

Pirouette

The newspapers were right: I'm going to drink myself to death tonight. Wait, stop, back up. I just caught myself taking myself seriously again. Weight drops, facts, loves. Eyes. Lust, not myself, was faking nice well. Seriously? Again? I'm shocked and a pallbearer. It's locked in: a call fearer. I don't want to hear the news. Shut myself back in with a tear and a bruise in a shallow place, wearing away at this callow face. So what if I'm clichéd? Let's call this heart a three of spades and start digging me up. Send a kiss through the mail and keep on rigging me luck. Knowing this, I won't bail but I may stop to waste my hunch money. Something about the knows kept the launch runny, but on this jaunt through Hell, I'll still want to taste your smell. There're only a million ways to say "Better to burn out than fade away." I'm not the one from your dreams: things are just the way the seams tear me an opening. You spared me the jokes and things.

manus haec inimica tyrannis

how many slaves did you enlist to build this wall? too scared to deal with whatever free-for-all? berlin has got shit on my feelings. how many generations until it falls? how could you ever love a horde like the mongols? i can see you through the brickwork, and i'm trying so goddamn hard to make this thick jerk seem convincing despite the joy i take in wincing. keep hiding among the parapets, we'll see how corrupt power gets when i make a move to invade lands for which you prayed. we're both haunted; neither of us wants this.

like the english patient, but more breakdowns

i swear the sigh of relief you heard wasn't from my lips. mine, sure, but not mine, and in case you're wondering what gives, i apologize for the two-facedness and the saying what you want to hear. it's just that to see you trace it, miss, as far as warmth i've got naught to fear. i just wish going to bed alone wasn't set in stone. and it's you, doctor, i presume and we met while traveling through my room. it's a jungle in here, but darling, so long as you don't tumble, don't fear. i'm struck and/or stuck mute. (i'm half-tempted to say, "fuck cute," but my heart's acting up again. my lungs are squeezing shut and playing the part's acting, but again these rungs are teasing shut-ins.) it's jurisprudence, it's written in cold blood. it's your twist movements, and i'm smitten in the bud. i just wish going to bed alone wasn't set in stone. i presume these writings will also spell my doom.

"you needed nothing of mine" (shitty eyes)

i miss the snow, the miles and miles to go. such a barometer of our society, white gets grey and then fuck purity. through the flakes you'd rise higher and higher, kept adrift above these lakes on wings of my stupid, dumb desire. take this advice: never stop to think or look twice. where faces are wreckful and bites go for a neckful you're better off aloft. i'd tell you to save yourself but i know you're out of my range anyway. i know i won't have to say you fell 'cause i know you know that i'm strange, and he may treat you real nice but never stop to drink or fuck twice. keep flying, i'll see you around. i'll keep trying to make it off the ground.

a three-way deathmatch between franz ferdinand, frantz fanon & franz kafka for possession of my eternal soul

i'm not in the business of loosening lips or playing games, but rather sinking ships and laying blames. give me a border right now and i'll cross it, honest. gush down the drain into you like from a faucet. tallest tale i could ever tell: finding my way to safety from this hell. i guess the difference is distance. i'll hack through every vine that i can see, but the only one looking out for mine is me, so i'll play it safest when i'm feeling bravest. take projected earnings and revenge burnings and sudden turnings in stride. i don't have feelings so who really cares what i look like inside? liars and cheats, and "just trying to make ends meets." we're all in this together. and while it seems like forever, in a few minutes we'll wish for a change in design. from the other side, things seem so strange, besides.

starving at tiffany's

i'm feeling overdone like lyrical clichés: it's last call for rhyming "pull it" with "bullet." i'm feeling so done in like when you say that "he says." it's not going to be honest so i might as well bullshit: you're like a goddamned lottery ticket. keep on trying and eventually i'll stick it? (will all the losses pale in comparison to some far-off imagined monetary win?) stay tuned, i'll bet we'll find out soon. maybe it'll be the next one. and the next one, or the next one, it'll be excellent. just you wait and see. everyone will want to be me. go ahead and pick up my slack — because i am never coming back. i'm leaving this land of milk and floods. momma always said, "beauty is as beauty does," and i've asked around; we all agree that you've got it, but it was a toss up until you jumped up and caught it. my hopes too, but they must come down. if i fell from my cliff i know i wouldn't make a sound.

dancing!!! (animasque in vulnere ponunt)

i've got seven goals in a period, see, and you're still not taking me seriously. i can go through the motions same as anybody else. sure, the uniform's changed, but the smirk is just the same. don't put me on the shelf. i can hold my hand to my heart same as anybody else. sure, the rules have changed, but the game is the same. don't radio for help. i've got my colours on my sleeve and a number on my chest. maybe we can make believe that this is all for the best, and maybe we can get out of this alive. the odds are high but i'm dying to survive. and the edge or dead centre, but couldn't it both? i'll pour my insecurities into a cup and make a toast. lose myself to the dance floor, as i compete with the dead to see who can romance more. i'll get over myself eventually. until then content yourself with watching me bleed. until then, content yourself with watching me be me.

close to ghost

god save the queen, the king is dead. god loves a liar, it's the witch instead. and i'm finally coming close to finishing this off. all i need is the cash, the grab-&-smash state of mind and the kiss-off. is it the best thing i could do? don't have the time to calculate hedons, but i bet that you would too given the situation and the smell of freedom. so sick of dancing in this macabre ball, i'm finally coming close to ending it once and for all. ding dong, the witch is crying. long live the king's son. the king is dead, fuck, the king is dying, did you think this was fun? now tell me, what did you expect? something other than a wreck? we were so close to the coast! so now we're finally coming close to ghost.

the navarro dardanelles

caught up in a scandalous dream with turtlenecks and fabulous cream. could someone tell me where i'm going wrong? 'cause i hate to catharsize myself through song. it always means hang-ups about the stupidest things, and all the knots & tangles that thoughtfulness brings and could someone tell me why high school is never dead? with so little said i don't know what's there to be over-read. still feeling like a kid, was it something i did? but i know it's not about me in the end. just another one too dumb to pretend. it took me longer to notice but that doesn't change what it was. just another stupid link between "why?" and "because."

wheat field with crows

so when you quit driving nails into my eyes for just a bit i'll pry the hammer from your goodbyes and sling it so far away finding it'll take forever less a day. the most common problem with webs is they won't leave you alone, but as this familiar tide ebbs i'm dying just to keep my home from breaking apart. i can see the cracks spreading like the dark and i wish i could say something worth saving. these frowns in hard-hats just won't ever stop repaving my past, half-assed, now half-past long past due. the time for half-mast has passed and if there's something i wish i had amassed, it's you.

big steps (dark satanic thrills)

it's not so much a pain as a shock-hurt, even thought the breakdown's just like clockwork. so i'm sitting here trying to be bobby oppenheimer with an emotion explosion and a ticking egg timer. a smile and a hug, denial and a tug at a heart in my head, of a hand in my bed. we know how this goes, the very same thing at all the very same shows. i've never been able to avoid you, not to mention all the tricks that annoyed you and i'd tackle/tap that crackle, snap popping of my dream bubble. these fingerprints can only mean trouble. i've never been there before but goddamn it i want to go. now i'm stuck in a detour and goddamn it i'll never even know (let alone come close).

henry david thorough: (speaking) eloquent (with my hands)

i hope you're getting something out of this. cause if it was me, i know i wouldn't be missed. "oh that's just life, love and strife." don't give me that shit. i'm staring at you, pleading, and it's hit or miss or just take the piss and get it over with. and when i manage to forgive, i'll let you know. until then, i'll watch you as you go. and these hands aren't strong enough to accomplish all the million things that i'm dying to get along with but at least i'm not that crazy, right? credit that to my hazy sight, and a marked lack of guns but not of fear. every new day's a step further away from here. and why won't i die? because beneath this mask, don't you know that i'm not a spoof? that i'm more than flesh. ideas are bulletproof.

the ascetic aesthetic: ni vu, ni connu

frail little frowny-stars, self-obsessed behind chocolate bars. curled, crumpled up inside. fetal position, nowhere to hide. your insecurities show through your figure. so afraid of getting bigger. face taped to the instruments of torture. these motherfuckers are making a fortune. the happy medium's not enough. extremes aren't as rough to embrace. look yourself in the face. the mirror's friendlier than the toilet. your life is not a race. don't let their money spoil it.

ineffectual

nobodies strewn across this dead-end street. the wind keeps driving back my feet. so true, so bereft of you. faces grin and moan, but i can do this on my own. i'm still not quite sure what happened. now there's no shelter from that wind. with or without you, i can't live. you've seen how i am, you can't give me what i'm dying for. whispered wisps of beauty got me sighing "whore." who needs sleeping pills when you've got knives? who needs you to leave me behind?

les superhéros

darkened streets and haunted windows. in every avenue, in every alleyway. in the right light, the city's sin glows. i'm a battering ram coming right your way. caped, gloved, masked, restrained. i don't think this needs to be explained. our lips can do the exploring, our bodies the talking. stares from church spires boring holes through the backs of the mocking. manhole covers shift a little, moonlight shivers. laughing gas and poison-arrow quivers. arch-nemeses rise up, only to be defeated. exist but to be replaced and then repeat it. i'll enjoy your stay with me up on the rooftops. but we know you'll be on your way soon as the moon drops. i'll kiss you goodbye, give a little sigh and wonder why. it's something i can't deny.

fuck crowdsurfing (a mistake in progress.)

normal expectations were on the run, but it seems you've sapped the fun. and you turned me into a post-statement liar, balancing on this debasement high-wire. faster than i had a chance to say, "what the fuck?" and the friendship is stuck. jesus fucking christ, your mistakes are so high priced. she smacked her lips and grabbed your dick, i smacked myself for coming on the trip but now we've moved on to bigger and better things. standing in shit and i'm looking for a set of wings. the day i learn to fly i'm never coming down. in the back of my mind i hope you'll drown.

answer that and stay rational

i know it's time to end the silence but it's hard to speak i'm so frustrated. i've always romanticized violence but your reasons feel outdated. and now it's not even that you're got your blinders on, two-eyed people, dog-like, following a blind person, but once people who can't think for themselves start thinking to themselves that we're all going to hell, better watch out for the (invisible) death cartel. some people think dissenters need saving, some think they need death for graven images of prophets. imagine the profits (spiritual) one could reap or profits (monetary) that one could keep for killing some hated goldstein figure, pull of a trigger or maybe something bigger, how about a whole hotel straight to the hospital? hey!

Storm Surgery

shacked up like a war wound. eyelids heavy, brain is de-tuned. legs thrown around. oblivious to sound. run my tongue around this cracking mouth, backwards cite the hippocratic oath. i think something's gone wrong here. the television's attack is relentless. smiling, grinning war-profiteers. the coverage is twenty-four seven. i'm spent, miss. take my deadpan away for wiretaps. don't know what to say so i'll excrete higher maps to nothing they want to find anyway. and i'm starting to get resigned to this confusion. to this pollution. the tv's relentless, and hey, miss, i'm spent, miss. the wires fester from my sweaty skin. fall alive and then get dead again. time means nothing these days, these ways i'm falling. the phone's off the hook from relatives calling. they can hear my head whisper so i chose to de-list her. my body's a levee and i can feel her breaking. my eyelids are heavy and won't someone please stop the shaking? shacked up like a war wound, close my mind and let myself be fed-spooned. okay computer.

too punk to fuck (la femme idéale)

this is an ode to the out-of-reach, an elegy for the stuck-up bitch. fake living perfect on a plastic beach, dying pretty, distant, angry and rich. pink promiscuity tracksuits you so well. sunglass cage, pursed lips, and how i wish you'd go to hell. i hate it that i want you so badly. i haunt you 'cause i hate you so madly, and it feels like you're all the same. still, i can't keep saying my instinct's to blame, exploring the caverns of the want/need dichotomy. you breathed, blushed and your pretty eyes got to me. i'd ask you to leave me alone but you're doing your best already, so i'll sit here and imagine you moan while you live out your fucking tragedy.

"...ill met by moonlight, proud titanic..."

shackles crumble. they start to rumble. hoods slip off, pulled by reawakened hands. eyes ablaze as they form roving bands. jumpsuits now a symbol of power. and for the rest: that sweet superiority's turned sour. imagine the look in his eyes, the surprise, when that face he'd never paid too much attention to hunts him down; makes him eat his vomit off the ground. and i've been told not to confuse revenge for justice but it would be nice for just this one time to see black and white reversed. and i can see your reactions: they look so rehearsed. condemnation. anger. hatred and, er, what should we call it? racism is frowned upon these days. even when dealing with these fallen-but-now-risen excommuniqués.

Cutting Veins Away

ink me up and down, i want my veins to run with black. cut them away and watch gravity pick up the slack. as i fall i'll ask you to take up this, my attack. laying down to rest in death between the dying cracks. this means more to me than you will likely ever know. i alone will, in the moment, understand the meaning of when i am meant to go. a blood pact with a stranger i'll never meet. going out with a fftt, what a way to be complete. last call for memento mori, i'm praying i won't feel sorry. life and death are but two sides of the same coin. smile on my face as i watch opposing corners join.

The Hand That Cradles The Rock

savour the taste, feel its embrace. feel the weight in your palm, dying trying just to keep calm for another moment or two. the time is nigh but the whole thing has yet to start. another moment or two before the beginning of the end, before you get to play your part. bask in the heat, the sun, your anger, light on your feet, your eyes filled with rancour. this is what it all comes down to. the charges have been laid. there are things they shouldn't get away with, there are prices to be paid. the hand that cradles the rock strikes hard. anger from your pains fills your lungs, it fills your veins. and you: don't think you can get away with these games cause when it pours, it raises fists straight from the ground. can you hear that sound? that's what you sowed coming back around.

(No Relation) and Statue of Liberty vs. Brendan Shanahan

three feet in the grave, digging up bones. this summer it seems we're all dead ramones. black leather, bad weather. jeans torn at the knees. no upstroke: it's not a joke. we're all adopting names that end in "ee"s. the kkk took my baby away and these days i just want to have something to do. blood is gushing, rocket's russian. when i'm down you know it's carbona not glue. song titles that begin with "i don't." and when you leave, you know i'm glad to see you go; go mental.

-----

hold it up, hold it up high. thinking you've got it in the bag. got your arm raised up to the sky, hoping to see our shoulders sag. but you missed it. and you kissed it goodbye. nice try, but you kissed it goodbye. standing right there to pop it in the net. looks like all that's left for you is regret. i'm not sorry. you thought we were your quarry. moving on to bigger and better things. you're left counting your many rings from yesteryear. nothing to fear but pride in self. you'll excuse me when i don't drink to your health.

-----

so that was fun to get some new stuff done. i don't think either is 100% yet but... both are good starts. i still have to write "The Hand that Cradles the Rock" and that should be enjoyable.

Crossed Out

snoozers losers, wakers takers. this time around, i'm the faker. finders keepers, losers weepers. this time around, you're the reaper. seventeen years under the curse, but i'm out of this hearse. and the best thing, or should i say the worst: you're still immersed. keep your knees bent, keep your head down. plug your ears so you can't hear the sound. that prison is where the answers are found — just don't look around. after all these years, still playing on the same old fears. i'd ask them, "where's your shame?" but i know how good they are at this game. seems i can only swing and miss so i will just leave it at this: fuck religion.

Danger With The Vest Screamin Shoot The DJ

i remember it too. bathroom doorways slanting with light. darkness coloured black and blue but my thoughts left turned on all night. someone hit the fucking switch, i'm drunk off my exhaustion. someone deliver me from this itch and all that this silence is costing. hands numb at the wheel, can't grip to u-turn much less turn myself around. forgotten what it's like to feel as i watch you burn. as i watch you fall. as i watch you drown. all i'm asking for is some roadside assistance. can't do it myself, i'm seatbelted in. all i'm asking for is some outside resistance. can't do it myself, i'm straight-jacketed. hold me closer. i'll be joey dick if you'll be the gun. i'll be the ending if you'll be the hit-and-run.

& Crazy Horse

you can't get married to your insecurities and whatever she's saying just isn't curing me. i'm doing my best not to be broken but someone keeps slamming this door shut. trying not to be too obvious picking up the pieces, trying not to be too awkward straining for releases. the damage isn't quite written all over my face, but i'm sure it's visible in my eyes staring into space. trying to see you with eyes unclouded by love, but we both know just what i'm thinking of.

Zero Sum Games

accidentally alive; getting juice with a heavy heart. the only girl i've ever loved, the tinges that won't for the life of me depart. the skyscrapers i miss in hindsight, the mornings that evolve from late nights. backs broken and hunched, eyes dotted, closed and scrunched. i knew this wasn't going to be easy, somehow, but being here it seems harder to come down off my high horse, off my sky-course, off my 'the end is nigh' morse code messages to anyone and no one. i don't have a heart but i've been trying to grow one. i know you have something of a green thumb, but trying to talk to your face makes me dumb. you hand me the seed, hands gloved. the only girl i've ever loved. put it in my chest, sew it up. hope for the best, give me a hug. waiting for an olive-branch bearing dove that i'm pretty sure won't be the only girl i've ever loved. so it goes but this hurts and it shows. oh well.

visigoth

kill me, i'll be your token skeleton in the closet. broken glass and promises, putting out the embers and the non-participating club members. we all know this isn't going anywhere. seems this torture is anything but fair. i can't be the only one going crazy here, sitting alone in a crowd facing what we fear. politics and subplots, poisoned or bumped off. divvying up the empire has me leaving at a loss. this can't be the only way out of here, but the exit signs that keep flying past are anything but clear.

Most Likely To...

seems you're using words that express ideas which you fail to grasp, and guessing at, but missing, concepts that your mind can't define. it's okay, everything will be fine. this trend isn't ending anytime soon. if there is one, i suppose that the boon is that it's easier to uphold the party line. you'll be okay, everything will be fine. lose yourself a little in pre-packaged phrases, let the meanings blur like so many new faces at a party you don't quite understand. swinging at and missing their underhands. it's okay. everything will be fine. just don't ever try to fucking assign any meaning, any value to the words whose definitions take flight like frightened birds. give in to this prison we live in, let ideas have their skulls kicked in by this mental pabulum looking for its next victim. behind the scenes they chuckle away, "we tricked 'em." freedom of speech and of thought go down together. at least you can still talk about the weather. they may vote for you, but i think you're most likely to carry the damn torch and for as long as you possibly can keep this fucking shit going. these seeds that you're sowing are making me so sick of it all. i hope that you fall.

an overinflated sense of self-importance

has lead me to change the title here. also it's a way cooler band name than a rebel to tame, methinks.

"Lady Eboshi: What exactly are you here for?
Prince Ashitaka: To see with eyes unclouded by hate."

*thanks imdb.com*

in addition: a bunch of stuff i've written lately.

-----

Beyond Understanding

Broken light bulbs flicker on and off; passersby turn their heads and cough. This can't be happening; am I in a haunted house? This stuff defies explanation. Could somebody find me a way out? I came in here looking for my cat, seems there's more in here worth looking at. Papers blow around, birds fly in slow motion. Inconsistencies abound. I'm not just going through the motions, but suddenly I'm being dragged away. For a while there I wanted to stay. I come by every now and then to drop a can down to the ground hoping maybe it'll float again, but there's no haunted house to be found.

-----

The Left Profile

trapped between the covers and the guilt, trying not to play this role to the hilt. always the bad guy, never the bride. sometimes it feels like i'm only along for the ride. life's passing me by like so many telephone wires running alongside train tracks in the countryside. it has its ups and downs but after a while i stop paying attention. indifference becomes too ordinary to mention.

exes and "oh"s.

period pieces

in reverse chronological order, because i'm dumb like that, here are the five poems that i wrote over the past five weeks that haven't been posted here yet.

sepia-tinted lust (a quick pitch in the haystack.)

lick your lips, taste defeat
unable to stay away
a few months of downtime
run your fingers through your hair
where did you go wrong?
fruit on the table, melted wax
memories burning to a crisp
memories of fantasies returning
and you'd like to say cease and desist
but there's something about the feeling
the sensation in your body
you can taste the anticipation as much
as you can't taste the fruit
but as pain and pleasure intermingle
the issue becomes moot.

a few minutes later,
you come to.

&& feel a little guilty.

-----

opening...

the foreseen hard rain fell last night
iron fists in velvet gloves pounding the ground
bludgeoning the grass and the mind alike
without so much as a warning
from the weather channel.

-----

for claire, with apologies.

emptied bottles; cans
mental and physical
litter this emotional no-man's land
i'm here and
it'
s clear that things aren't easy
to understand
from the evolutionary biology to the ethics
to the religion — discussions i'm not quite sure
if i'd rather not have
but i have anyway
they leave me the worse for wear
to the point where dreams really might be
destiny
and your dreamt-of friends
are just outside your door;
just around the corner
waiting to be found if only i had
the good taste to wake up
on the right side of the bed.
goes to show what i know —
i woke up anyway. though
the rebukes were less stinging in real life
even if i knew why already.

but the most important thing is the binary
fear / and having forgotten it
it seems that's all there is these days

{i pause a moment to
take off my new
christmas gloves.}

and then resume

it's the gnawing, it's the cold
it gives me the shakes, the shivers, the fear
doesn't
let
go
and as if that wasn't bad enough i'm not allowed
to be fearful, not by others
and not by the part of me that knows fear is stupid
because what i fear ain't avoidable
still i cling like a drowning rat of a man
drowning in debt / drowning in air , unable to breathe
falling from the nyse and accelerating
at 9.8 metres per second squared
only they don't use the metric system
in america.

(i would, of course, love to end there — my senses tell me
it would be a good place to end
but my logic tells me
the story's not half over and so
i continue)

this fear which like the cold
makes my heart flutter and pump faster
for a second or two
makes me ponder whether i have a heart disease
i'd love t o hear that. i've always wanted a doctor to examine me
and be in awe
and disbelieve
and wonder how i've lived a normal life
so far, how i managed to survive
and not even make a big deal of it
and i'd just say "i got used to it"
"i thought it was no big deal"
or whatever, like some kind of nonchalant
medical miracle but i've always wanted to be special
always wanted to have superpowers,
play in the nhl, be a rockstar
a writer a poet an artist
someone who doesn't fall in step
left right left right left
i always wanted that something more
which half of me laughs at
"yeah right you dumb fuck,
you're gonna be working nine to five like the rest of us
a job you hate, a boss you hate
coworkers you either want to strangle or you want to fuck
or maybe both
or maybe both at the same time, but fetishes are weird"
and the other half valiantly defends
"fuck you man
i was always different
always not quite the same stuff as
everyone else
always just a different shade of a similar story
but there's that difference
and that's what separates the people
who go on to be rockstars
or writers / poets / artists
whatever
from everyone else"
and then a third half of me comes in with
"oh but does a career really define a person?"
and the other two halves agree on that at least
but now the seed of doubt is sown
and i'm not so sure.
i'd like to believe when i hear
from other people
that i'm going somewhere,
that i've got a gift or a talent but fuck
who doesn't these days?
and there's, of course, always someone better.
a problem i'm quite familiar with.
and this desire to be special
to be specialer because everyone's special
is the kind of thing that both leads me in
and causes me problems
when you're told and
it should be accepted but
i need to be told again
reminded over and over
how goddamn special i am
which for one makes me just like every other insecure self-centered prick
and for two is ridiculous
neither of which are attributes i particularly want to embrace.
and i'm told this makes me a woman

i'm afraid.
it's not the first time i've realized
how dominated by fear i am
how many of my actions, how much of my character
just because i'm afraid. but this time it really scares me
(oh, the irony — it kills)
i don't even think it's normal and
if there's one thing i know
it's that as much as i hate keeping up façades
the one i most want to bring down is likely also the most necessary
concordantly, while i'm trying to sound like the architect here,
fear vis-a-vis real life is totally ridiculously wrong
nothing drives that point home harder than
the misplaced paranoia
that hits me every time i see two teenaged guys
talking to each other
while i'm on the bus
and somehow i think they're talking about me
and i kick the part of myself that's stupid enough
to think i matter enough
to think i put enough of a dent in anyone else's life just like that
for them to start discussing me and i wonder of course
how i would react if i heard two people plotting to mug
another stranger on the bus
i always get afraid in public because i know
(Based on me feelings at least)
how loath to intervene in that kind of thing
people truly are
would you tell a stranger if they were about to get fucked over?
weirdass situation, i know
and part of me tells the paranoid half
to stop being such a pretentious fearful self-centered moronic cunt
but i can never shake that fear
and that's...

stupid.

ergo;
volunteering information,
as has been told to me today already,
is some kind cardinal sin.
i won't lie if i'm asked but i know it won't come up
so i shut my mouth
sit down and huddle around my feelings
my whiny bitchy fearful feelings
god i'm a woman.

meh.
life goes on.

[wow, that's a terrible place to end.
i really am sorry.]

well merry christmas in any case.

-----

exhibition

like offending real-life autumn leaves
on perfect pale statues
of supine couples bent at the knees,
free of offending hues
(but for us.) and i don't know if they believe
but we both know it's true;
fingers intertwined and a whispered, "k please"
it's clear that you like me
and i like you.

<3

-----

pyromania

she's a flame
and i don't want to play the blame game
but i'm starting to burn 'round the edges
oh, she's a flame

she's setting me alight
whirling dancing, shaking, really she's making
me high and i've got a few reasons why
tonight it's okay to die
going up in flames

she was flickering, she was blowing about
in the wind
she knocked on the door and i let her in
and now she's burning down the house
quiet as a mouse and she's in,

warming up the cockles of my heart
she's been singing me right from the start
but it's never been
such a bad thing
with her

oh, oh, she's a flame
and i don't want to play the blame game
but i'm starting to melt and regain
my happiness back once again

she's a flame.

-----

that's all, folks.

the last line of the song is i hope you choke

the thing that bugs me about the wall
is the dull bluntness
the way it feels used, worn out
though the ground it's over is fresh
and it should be young and hard and it should hurt
the corners should make me bleed
the surfaces pristine
but no such luck none of the above.

god i feel like i'm going crazy.
i'm sure she's talking to him and they're
having such beautiful deep and long conversations
and he thinks i'm ridiculous because ours
are so short and contrived and somehow with
all that's there there's still nothing
what did i do wrong?

and that part of me that used to be so rare
that showed up two days ago to no fanfare
and i wanted to kill him then and later i did too
but now he's back and i'm trying to shut him the fuck up
even if he won't go like so many guests around
christmastime.

and then someone else is parroting about
pseudo-deep bullshit, the wolf pack is screaming
and usually i'd love the anger about
politics and whatnot
but right now it hurts and i can only be angry
at myself.

an experiment in failure (aka success at last)

the perfectitude of a blank sheet of paper
a new piece
just an apple-n away
or
if i'm feeling industrious
a walk down a hall or two
in a drawer next to the printer
real, solid
if only a little.

but now i've gone and done it —
it's ruined.

oh well.

born with insight and a raised ... eyebrow

run my fingers through my hair
eyes tired from too many hours trying too hard not to care
drag my hand across my face
grasping at poems about rebels, walls, deaths & outer space
this crippling feeling isn't fair

and it really is
shifting back and forth
author /

critic

different styles of poetry
i'm not used to this ... inability.
god i hate selfconscious writing but

i can't not...

at this point i've been pondering relevent quotes from the background music to use so:

"say it ain't so / i will not go"

quietly into that good night?... of silence.

i'm trying. it's like trying to relearn to ride a bicycle.

spelling bicycle always gave me problems. the i and the y... and of course i'd like to think everyone else does it fine just so i can be special but that's stupid.

the author/critic break is SO pretentious... agh. i look at it and it's terrible but then i don't want to ... go back... i'm pissed off because i usually don't stumble, don't edit and that's gone and... augh. (i was going to write aurgh.) so my saving grace (recourse, i don't even know what that means) is to just ... write what i think afterwards instead of using it to edit... which taken to its logical extreme produces all sorts of typos and grammar aerros and it gets impossible to rea (see past sentecne)_

wow that's bad. god.

k i'm done.

pretentious (ridiculous at best)

i saw the best (worst) minds of my generation waste away under the strain of constant connected entertainment, who said things like and so he will not cheat on his wife and thus would make an excellent american president and ignored the painful irony or who talked knowingly (so knowingly) and yet ignorantly of freud or war or genocide, who criticized each other for n00bishness and who made things important because they were important, and for no other reason, who god this is pretentious i can't go on goodbye.

i'm stumbling! ... get me out of here.

Something About Poststructuralism...

I'd like at this point to shout and scream, "Let's go!"
But I'm aware the phrase has certain connotations
I'd like to rhyme with the last line but, alas, I know
It's overdone because so many words end with "ation"

I still manage to listen to and enjoy bands like NOFX
Rancid, Bad Religion and occasionally even Anti-Flag
Despite Minor Threat's stance against beer, drugs and sex
And the way they all make the guys from Propagandhi gag

I could over-intellectualize and dismiss the critics with a
Scoff and mention something about post-structuralism
To justify my taste for middle-of-the-road punk rock, but hey
It wouldn't make up for my marked lack of past & present activism

And while we're at it I sometimes even listen to Alkaline Trio
I don't hate post-Danzig Misfits and I enjoy a little Thrice
I don't think about factory farms at every fucking meal
Is my hardcore punk status walking on dangerously thin ice?

And while this isn't an update on Real World by Hüsker Dü
I still feel a sizable twinge of shame every time I listen to,
Say, American Idiot, or maybe, I don't know, Indestructible;
Every time I pass a homeless kid, or a squeegee punk girl.

I long to buy my clothes second-hand, replace my Nikes with
Unswooshers, go straight to vegan and start to fucking live—
Dance whenever the fuck I feel like it, stop being so self-conscious
Take action when people smoking starts to make me feel nauseous

I yearn to engage in discussions with total fucking strangers.
I guess the sum of this song is to talk about the dangers
Of being a punk rocker: Instead of just saying, "Fucking screw it!"
I'd rather smile wryly, nod and say, "The music made me do it."

you say it's a truce...

here i am drowning in nothingness
look into your eyes but i can see that you're bluffing this
asking for a breather, pleading for respite
hoping you'll be gentle but i see that you're rough at this

you say it's a truce
but i know it's just a ceasefire
you say it's the truth
but i know you've always been a liar

odd how the best things are also the worst
odd how the one that remains was also one of the first
odd how your smile cuts me up inside
i'm bleeding, yes, but not to satisfy your thirst

you say it's a truce
but i know it's just a ceasefire
you say it's the truth
but i know you've always been a liar

Cancer

there's the gun and the temple
the temple and the prayer
the desperate man whose life is
hanging on the words of a hearsayer

there's the noose and the neck
the neckline and the black hair
the desperate man whose life is
hanging on the words of a soothsayer

there's the blade and the skin
the skintight dress on the back of the chair
the desperate man whose life is
hanging on the words of an untruth sayer

there's the fist and the mirror
the mirror image of something so rare
the desperate man whose life is
hanging by the breadth of a fear's hair

hanging by a fear's hair's breadth
so until sweet, sweet black death
do us part, in the dark, oh my darling

you're my cancer, my sweet, sweet cancer
killing me with the poetry of a ballet dancer
and the unwitting precision of a coincidence
oh my cancer, of my causer of incidents.