fireeyedboyyy

Anything but that.

2008-03-18T08:01:05Z

Here I am again
Blindly following
A promise that was
Never made unto
My self-destructive
End;

The price of making
Make-believe the
Only truth I seek
Is disappointment
Once again;

And you’d think I’d
Get it one of these
Days, with all the
Consequences I
Always seem to pay;

Investing everything
I have in every
Opportunity,
In what I know is
Never guaranteed;

It’s just so much
More interesting
Than anything
I have to give
Myself;

There’s nothing left
To get except my
Self-respect, but
I just cannot save
Me from myself.

The storm.

2008-02-15T20:43:50Z

There is clarity in the midst of this hurricane fever;
An eye wall of colors and shapes
And impassioned ambiguous dayglow hearts burning weathered fire
Disband the sickness;
The chaos rages, roars
Consumes, it ebbs and flows
It binds but it frees,
It protects from the storm,
But it is the storm itself
And I am putting my raincoat on.

written on a sleepless speed-driven morning on paper towels.

2008-02-13T22:07:20Z

Left without a trace
Diligence expects disgrace
Left without a face
So many respects to trek
Without a common place
Reject complex insects
They hide in front of your face
Design intricate webs of lies
Dazzling to the eyes

Someone wrote me a letter
Said it doesn't get much better
But never any worse
Said at least you ain't
Riding in a hearse
Said it blunt
Said it honest
Said it terse
Like prose in perfect verse
If any day could be the day
Then why not yesterday
It could be yesterday

Tried climbing vines of twine
Didn't get that high
Couldn't hold up to what
They had,
They had it all combined
And it got rough,
Real rough
Made it really tough for us
With ropes of money
'Round our necks
They couldn't comprehend it
That we weren't dead
Said they set a trap
Impossible to escape
Inescapable size
Indescribable weight
Incomprehensible shapes
But everything's in constant motion
It don't slow down
Not for the traders or the Market
Just because we worship it
Our lives inside it doesn't
Make the world any less round
And yet I'm still astounded
With this money noose
'Round my neck

Something profound in
Endless patterns we repeat
Everything you seek
On infinite repeat
In winning losing streaks
The blessed are still meek
It's really not that bleak
Cause now it's in the streets

A picture poses as
A million different things
Cockroaches, diamonds
Or a knockout in the ring
A blessing counts its chances
In the pocket of a king
He conspires,
We conspire,
Plots and schemes,
Fantastic magic dreams
Elusive faraway dreams
We can dream
We can dream
It's all a dream

Writer's Block: 2008 Accomplishment

2008-02-13T06:27:56Z

What is your biggest accomplishment thus far in 2008?

View 500 Answers

What I just posted. And discovering that worrying is a waste of time.

myBookfacester!!!!

2008-02-13T06:24:45Z

Welcome, User! wtf is UP?! Welcome to myBookfacester, the latest and undoubtedly greatest new social networking website to shake the Internet community! Fuck Facebook, fuck Myspace, and fuck whatever other pussy-ass website you’ve been using to befriend anonymous strangers in the past!! myBookfacester is the revolution social networking has been waiting for. myBookfacester is the ONLY social networking website that lets you see an entire theoretical situation HAPPEN! Let me explain. First, the basics. You know what to do (you’ve done it at least three times now… even more than that if you also make them for your friends). You make a profile, same as any old Facebook or Myspace page, type in your name and what you like, etc, and present it with a song or song(s) that you feel is or are an accurate representation of your personality (that day)… perhaps with a grainy music video you found on YouTube. You type up a summation of yourself in a few paragraphs or less; enough to present your most favorable attributes to the world, but not quite long enough to start getting into your anxiety-ridden neuroses, your paranoia or your bizarre fetishes. Just enough to show everyone on the community that you’re just as fake and superficial as everybody else. And that you can take a one-armed picture of yourself and it won’t come out blurry.
But here’s where Facebook or Myspace don’t go. What happens next is this; after you’ve created your profile, you type your name into myBookfacester’s trademarked and patented Hypothetical Situation Generator™ and match it up with any of your friends’. Just type your friends’ names into the generator’s Friends field and it will calculate infinitesimal probabilities to imagine what your future engagements together will be, in a Podcast-compatible format! WHAT’S that?! You can literally see the future… On.. your… iPOD™!!! Is there a Facebook application that can do that? (For $1.95 per video you can get them sent wirelessly to your phone via Bluetooth, standard text messaging rates apply). You type in the names of the party, the time of day/month/year, and the location, and myBookfacester will show you a likely hypothetical situation in which all of you are taking part in accordance to your specifications. Imagine a social networking website that can show you in advance what you and your friends (who you may or may not actually know in person) will be doing before you do it? See you and myBookfacester friends in an iTunes-compatible Mac-Windows-Linux-friendly format, doing the following: Sitting around talking about nothing. Sitting around talking about myBookfacester. Sitting around talking about how you’re going to sit around and talk about nothing later, but with alcohol!!! Random sexual encounters with (insert sexually ambiguous nonconformist scenester/scenesters here!) Group orgies! Coke binges with cheap prostitutes in filthy pay-by-the-hour motels on the South side! Having sex with cheap prostitutes in filthy pay-by-the-hour motels on the South side. Accidentally killing cheap prostitutes in a coke-fueled rage and then dumping their bodies in the river so no one will find out… with myBookfacester friends!! Drinking! Sex!! Drunken sex!! Topical humor!! Panic At The Disco!
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Instead of sitting at home and getting drunk by yourself, you can see yourself in an alternative scenario… you’re getting drunk with other people!!! Probably in a really small apartment somewhere way the fuck up in the north side with a bunch of drunk college kids of varying social groups/non-groups packed on to a balcony, all smoking on it ‘cause they couldn’t smoke inside. And there’s a sign posted on the inside side of the door with “6 to a limit on the balcony, we don’t want the paramedics here again… and Billy already got a $350 fine… so please, 6.” The last ‘6’ is underlined three times. There’s twelve people on the balcony. There might be a couple guys who just met each other there making out in the bedroom of whomever the apartment belongs to… seriously getting at it. “Yeah, on top of everybody’s fuckin’ coats!!! It sucked balls, nobody could get at their cigarettes for like… an hour! Fuck that shit.” Everybody is probably drinking PBR, Beast, or some kind of really cheap grain alcohol. Some really trashed guy is walking around with a bottle of Pine-Sol flavored gin, having a kinda-slurred but remarkably intelligible conversation about… ironically, the complexity and phenomena of social-networking websites… but in the end, the fact that they’re kind of all just a collective identity-sucking leech on the next generation of the human race. Like… it’s great that you can find just about any person anywhere on the entire planet and know what they listen to and what their favorite movies are and how they feel about anything and everything at THAT EXACT SECOND, but at the same time… isn’t all this weblogged togetherness distracting us from ourselves? Maybe we shouldn’t all be so constantly digitally interconnected and maybe we should all spend more time taking time to get to know ourselves. Maybe if we spent less time away from constant media bombardment, instant messaging clients, music videos, Torrents, blogs, “Meet Horny Girls in Your Area Now!”, etc… maybe we’d all be a little more in tune. Maybe we’d all be a little wiser. Maybe we’d all start doing something fucking great and stop writing bulletins and posting events about how we intend to change the world and how sending this message to everyone you know will really do it this time! But fuck, man, that guy is trashed. Don’t listen to him… he’s going on his second bottle, man. Yeah, he’s fuckin’ annihilated. Don’t even worry about it… you wouldn’t remember all the things you said you were gonna do last night cause you were so fucked up! BUT YOU WEREN’T!!! YOU’RE JUST WATCHING IT ALL HAPPEN HYPOTHETICALLY SOME BORED-AS-FUCK SUNDAY AFTERNOON!!! ON YOUR COMPUTER SCREEN! AND YOU NEVER HAVE TO LEAVE AGAIN!!!! Sorry! An unexpected error has occurred. This error has been forwarded to myBookfacester’s technical group.
myBookfacester, MOTHERFUCKERS! It’s the most hardcore! You less than 3 it!!! You wanna blog about it!!! Tom fucking joined it! Your mom fucking joined it!!!
(The author of this piece thought it was necessary to bring to light the fact that all of this was written because of hours and hours and hours of bullshitting and timewasting on many social networking websites, he being thoroughly delighted with the extremely ironic notion that this entire satirical piece about social networking websites and the harsh criticism thereof was based entirely on his HOURS AND HOURS OF POINTLESS BACK-AND-FORTH BROWSING THAT LED TO EITHER POINTLESS OR NONEXISTENT CONCLUSIONS. And subsequently, the even more ironic notion, that, upon the piece’s completion, he posted the piece on numerous social networking websites to spread the piece to as many people as he could, using the social networking websites that he was just harshly criticizing to, in fact, HIS OWN ARTISTIC AND SELF-MOTIVATED ADVANTAGE!!! He’s just a hypocrite, and that’s fucking ironic! So really, this whole piece is about the influential and, hilariously, hypocritical nature of irony as a whole. And that irony is the most ironic thing of all. Isn’t that ironic?! HAHA!!! And he’s on acid too!!! Hey Dubya, you’re TOTALLY winning the War on Drugs!!!)
(Publisher’s note – We, the publisher of this advertisement for myBookfacester, neither confirm nor deny the recent findings that myBookfacester has led to madness, suicide, group orgies, ritual sacrifices of small animals, and in some isolated cases, the total rejection of culture and media and full embracement of one’s true, honest and whole self… and the consequent ingestion of intense mind-warping hallucinogens thereof. We do not condone or endorse the author’s methods in any way, shape or form. We, in fact, do not condone or endorse the use of myBookfacester. But, that means… if we do not endorse any part of this five-page rambling endorsement… this whole thing is just the use of words to convey a meaning that is the opposite to that which is actually or ostensibly stated! It’s just a satire! It’s all just ironic, folks! As ironic as your life. But aren’t life’s little ironies the greatest things worth living for?)

under smiling darkness.

2007-11-10T20:21:14Z

9 November 2007.

The darkness rushes through me
Like an adrenaline shot
I'm alive for everything it is
And everything it's not
Your touch is like snowfall
And your kiss is salvation
The only concrete justice
In a desperate generation
The silence blankets radiance
Truth shines down from the stars
Your breath and mine mingle
Washes away my fears and scars
The frigid pavement beneath us
Chills while the stars above us twinkle
Curious fingers chart a map
And I shiver deliriously
As your hand draws a line
Down the small of my back
With all those wistful clouds up there
Smiling love down from the sky
Never cared to pass a judgment
Never needed to ask why
I am so lost in this moment
And I don't want to be found
Let the world go on without me
There'll be nary a sound
'Cept for the sound of us breathing
As our feet leave the ground
And we float skyward toward something
Something daring, something new
But is it all just sweet deception
Just a lie I can trust
While the lines blur indistinctively
Between maybes and musts
But you're an exquisite retreat
Someplace warm to escape to
When I'm breathless and scared
I can run back to me and you
Cause we're someplace to escape to
Someplace great to escape to...

song for our dying Mother.

2007-06-04T03:28:05Z

pressing play
takes all your strength
for one turn saves
but digs new graves
you can't grow it in a lab
my convictions gutted, stabbed
artificial homogeneity
originality sold and free-thought leeched
engineered babies, engineered food
deceitful pills to heighten mood

and everyone's addicted

but we're organic
fair trade
high grade
dismissed
discriminated
vilified
hated
but we don't listen
we just glisten
in our way
we are just anachronisms
antediluvians
schisms

ideas borne in youth's demise
a sunset not a sufficient prize
what we're supposed to want
is all a lie

for She is your best friend
and I'm terrified of the end
(but readier than ever)

and it's all your favourite songs
ever righting modern wrongs
it's our proof of God, our God

I watched a spaceship boisterously creep
to heavens held above our feet
I said goodbye to stars once free
I watched them tremble, watched them weep

we are all enslaved

oh taking last place feels better than first
taking last place feels better than first
oh oh imperfection bests the flawless
bests the flawless
saviour of the righteous lawless

up
up
up up and away
sitting, sunning
always running
sitting, sunning
outrunning all this useless gunning

and you are my best friend
and someday this will end

oh aw but for now
we can stay afloat somehow
we can live for now
it's still ours for now
and when we have to say goodbye
I'll not be sad, oh I won't cry
because we've made the best we could
our freedom ship of gnarled wood
not the product of conditioned "beauty"
we've got much greater duties
our obligations paramount
high above those which we doubt

this is the only time to soar
there is no such thing as more
everything for success is here
don't compromise
never adhere
never adhere

I love you much too much for this
we know the means to find sought bliss
the time is ever growing short
our one Mother will soon press abort
live free, embrace the unforgettable
before we're slaughtered by this murderous fractal

yet still I see a glimpse of hope
wedged high atop a mountain slope
miles above mankind's lazy head
it will take work and ethical retread

don't give up
don't shut up
don't back down
we can win
to their chagrin
we could just be idealistic youth
but it's our time
and we fight for truth

all this could just be a pipe dream
but love is life and I feel free

The last thing that She said to me:
"It's not the destination,
But the journey."

Currently listening :
Élan Vital
By Pretty Girls Make Graves
Release date: By 11 April, 2006

two weeks in verse.

2007-05-02T20:25:29Z

[i regress/23 apr 07]
i don't want to regress
i don't want to live to these standards i've set
but i'm human
and this is what i need
(sorely)
i've an itch i can't keep scratching myself
cause the itch just keeps on getting deeper
and distractions aren't working anymore
it's pretty clear
all signs
(so unavoidable)
point to it
isn't this why we're here?
i can't ignore it any longer
no sir
no way no how
but circumstance is withholding opportunity
oh i'd slit its throat if only i could
but it's got me in a stranglehold
i'm a big fish swimming in a pool of tadpoles
pushed further and further downstream
and i wanna break through
once
just once
just today
just for a little reassurance
just to know i can fit
i'm at everyone else's mercy
and i don't wanna keep pleading
can't keep pleading
but what are my options?
so to whom it may concern
make your presence known
help me disappear
'cause i can't do it without you
and it'd be really helpful
if i knew who you are
and i'm ready now
so fucking ready now
to be one of them
i can't be patient anymore
not now
and i'm even willing to settle
(within reason)
but the fact remains this is out of my hands here
and my only option
seems to be divine intervention
c'mon, allow me this once
can't we all have our moment in the sun
just once
just tonight
there's got to be something
and i don't want to show weakness
but i need this
so here i am
pleading
i'm ready for this
right now
and i digress
sometimes we have to regress.

[want-ad/23 apr 07]
well I don't know how you feel about
random encounters
locked doors
drawn blinds,
no names
just the time and place
and I must apologise for my forthrightness
I'm not usually like this
but I'm not myself today
I swear I usually hate
those kind of people
but I'm someone else today
please don't get attached to him
he's not who I am
there must be something in the water,
full moon, whatever
doesn't make a difference
I'm not going to excuse myself
for being human
because we've all got limits
and I've gone far over the line
so it's up to you boy
I don't usually show this side
but everything else is changing
so why not this, too?
for fuck's sake
I'm going out of my mind
beside myself, trapped
amidst this fire unstoppable
oh, it's raging
you can qualm it with distraction
but distraction only appeases for so long
before it needs a rest
and it's been let go
now it's out of control
and I know what it needs
I'm about to disintegrate now
come on now.
let's have some locked doors
drawn blinds,
discreetness?
absolutely.
it's up to you, though
I've let down this barrier I wear
I really don't bite, I swear
(unless that's what you'd like)
and again, I apologise for my forthrightness
(i'm not like this, I swear)
but in my defence
I am only human
and I'm sorry to sound like this
but enough's enough, really,
and now is all I'm asking for
just some damage control
before the fire takes over
and I burn down completely.
you can have it
(I insist)
so show your face
shadows are so unbecoming
when you hide alone
we can there hide together
anything you're up for,
whatever, it's cool, I'm down,
but it's got to be now
this is an exclusive, one-time offer.
all you need to do
is show up.

[feed/25 apr 07]
That drum has finally started beating
I wonder if the front's receding
'Cause it sounds to me like a reason
To see the sight of this new season

You feel just like a block of clay
A conditioned jewel slave to cliché
The possibilities entrap my thoughts
I'd save the day and fight the onslaught

Today's the day the sun is blazing
Like a sugar high recklessly raging
The world looks so different today
When opportunity lights the way

Even if no more than distraction
I love that you exhibit a reaction
To this forgotten shadow long ignored
I can show my face and cut the cord

I realise any salesman appeals
To a desperate customer in need of deals
But the package looks and feels so bright
I may be starved but this seems right

Help disengage my disregard
The hopelessness with which i've sparred
Allow the best to come outside
And birth what i have been denied

Today's the day the sun is blazing
Like a sugar high recklessly raging
The world looks so different today
When opportunity lights the way

Even if no more than distraction
I love that you exhibit a reaction
To this forgotten shadow long ignored
I can show my face and cut the cord

Diving recklessly into sanguine rivers
Hope revives but also slivers
Feel optimism's alluring buzz
But there's nothing to lose because
All i have is what you see
There's not much you could take from me

Distraught from endless plight and plunder
Governmental greed tossing ration asunder
In blasé weather you sound like thunder
I think a storm is what we need
So take your weary heart and feed
I'll take my weary heart and feed

[sorry/30 apr 07]
I love the way that you always did everything for me so I wouldn't have to strain myself
I love the way that I'm blaming you now
Don't worry, I'm just as much at fault
I love the way the greedy, fascist government fucks anyone who disagrees with its backward, amoral policies
I love how everything is so needlessly complex
I love how the only solution to my temporary problem only creates further problems in the future
I love how there really is no solution
I love how I'm headed down the same path
I love how I'm always wrong
I love the way I'm completely helpless
I love the way I don't know what to do
And I truly love the way that those useless miscreants
Those bad influences
Those stupid drug addicts
Make me feel better about myself than you ever made me feel
I love the way that they are my only source of moral support
I really love how you try to keep me from being around them
Because I'm so much better off right here in this desolate, emotionless black hole called home
This place devoid of love and honesty
I know I've got a thing or two to learn about being honest toward you
But keep in mind
I learned all of this from you
You were never honest to me
You may as well be total strangers
And you keep insisting you know what's best for me
When neither of you even know what's best for yourselves
Keep in mind that I never really knew what a family was
Until I started associating with those good-for-nothing, horrible people who do nothing but drugs and will never amount to anything
No, I'll probably never amount to anything in your eyes now
And maybe I will end up just like them
And maybe I don't have respect for you anymore
And maybe you have no respect for me
I know it appears you have no reason to respect or trust me
But I'm just doing what I have to to keep myself sane
And maybe I can't explain myself to you
Maybe I'm just a lying drug addict to you
Maybe to you I'm exactly the fucking same
Maybe we're irresponsible and reckless
But I know what's right for me
And I know what's morally correct
Yes, I realise it's "against the law"
But I know what I have to do
Does it make me a terrible person?
I know how to love
And I can care for others
And get off on generosity
But that's not the side you see
I know you tried as hard as you could
And I know maybe we both failed each other
And I know I may be saying goodbye sooner than you thought
Because this is getting ridiculous
And I'm sorry
I may regret my choices later
Or maybe not
But it's what I need to get by right now
I know things could have been much different
But this is the path we've taken
And no one can turn back,
All we can do is accept.

[what is/2 may 07]
what lengths we go to
to find truth
the boundaries we set
and forget
the limits we're given
seem to be prison
the enlightened exceed them
what is the cost of life
the American dream
prioritize
and compromise
who are our friends
what do we defend
what are your values
too good to be true
but it is
what is meaning
ever gleaming
diamond beneath dirty coal
why do we go
onward, forward
moving toward
what we don't know

feed.

2007-04-26T14:58:32Z

That drum has finally started beating
I wonder if the front's receding
'Cause it sounds to me like a reason
To see the sight of this new season

You feel just like a block of clay
A conditioned jewel slave to cliché
The possibilities entrap my thoughts
I'd save the day and fight the onslaught

Today's the day the sun is blazing
Like a sugar high recklessly raging
The world looks so different today
When opportunity lights the way

Even if no more than distraction
I love that you exhibit a reaction
To this forgotten shadow long ignored
I can show my face and cut the cord

I realise any salesman appeals
To a desperate customer in need of deals
But the package looks and feels so bright
I may be starved but this seems right

Help disengage my disregard
The hopelessness with which i've sparred
Allow the best to come outside
And birth what i have been denied

Today's the day the sun is blazing
Like a sugar high recklessly raging
The world looks so different today
When opportunity lights the way

Even if no more than distraction
I love that you exhibit a reaction
To this forgotten shadow long ignored
I can show my face and cut the cord

Diving recklessly into sanguine rivers
Hope revives but also slivers
Feel optimism's alluring buzz
But there's nothing to lose because
All i have is what you see
There's not much you could take from me

Distraught from endless plight and plunder
Governmental greed tossing ration asunder
In blasé weather you sound like thunder
I think a storm is what we need
So take your weary heart and feed
I'll take my weary heart and feed

Animal.

2007-03-22T20:51:29Z

Animals
We are
And don't tell me otherwise
We behave as they do
As we do
With righteous indignation
Blown up
Out of proportion
In the hands of the powerful
Stifle the one true free
Who embrace
Their true nature
Nature
The wild at heart
Would rather live
Than live within
Unreasonable restraints
Unfair
Byzantine
Complex
We behave
Act on instinct
Blindly follow emotion
What we perceive is best
Comes from within
But it's not the same
For every being
And just because one person thinks one thing
Does not make it so for another
The leader of the pack
Decrees
"You shall not"
But many do
"Put them away"
They don't adhere
Or find out what's wrong
"There must be something"
Pointless pointless therapy
Appointed
Find out what is wrong
"What works for them don't work for me"
Bad bad
Put them away
Run away
We're animals
We're men
We're human
We're all of these
But we're citizens
Without choice
Without discretion
Born into something
Out of our hands
I did not sign for this package
They signed for me
Paid a bill
That was not mine
Savagery is fine
And homogenization is peachy
Globalization is sublime
But there is no room
Anymore
Not for this
I want to disappear
Dissolve
Distraught
I can't watch them do this
One more prisoner
And I'll reject it
I'll reject it all
Too much misery
Too many wronged
Restrictions
Ignorance
Too young to run
With instinct in tow
I choose life
I choose the animal
I know
But look like a human
So I must be one
A number
A statistic
The animal denied
I choose love
But that's no longer an option
I make decisions no longer
They're being made for me
The body is mine
As is the mind
But the course the body takes
Is out of my hands
Puppeteer
Cut my strings
Can I return
Make me kindling
Should you care
Should you listen to the animal
You were one too once
Now a casualty
Will I be one too
What will I be
Will I lose my mind
My thoughts
Feelings
Opinions
Or can I disappear
I want to disappear
But they'll find me
Find me guilty
Addict
User
Liar
Irresponsible
Confused
But I'm not
Just an animal
Who needs another animal
And escape
Don't know where to go
But there's somewhere
And hope
Lives somewhere
But where is somewhere
We can make it so
Can we make it so
Don't know many answers
Plenty of questions
More questions
All questions
Disjointed
I constantly ask
But no response
I know lots of answers
But cannot bring myself to reach
The found conclusions
Will too weak
Will no more
Will never was
Repeat as necessary
Fucking animal.

it's the American way.

2007-03-16T15:20:08Z

And they say to me
Over and over again,
It'll ruin your life,
It'll fuck with your head,
Won't make it easier,
You'll just end up dead.
Advice from the white-collar,
The pig-headed Man,
Advice from your mother,
Advice from your dad.
They say it's irresponsible,
Weak and destructive,
They do it to cope
And are not to be trusted.
But alas, aren't I human
And is this life not mine?
Isn't experience exclusive?
Why am I not
The one to decide?
They've taken my soul
And hijacked my beliefs
And I must compromise
Everything that is me
To put more in the bank
Since an increase in funds
Is increased security
And it's all just to buy
The American Dream.
It's all too apparent
It's been made quite clear
To survive in this century
Everyone must adhere
To the ideology
Indoctrinated from birth;
Only faith in the system
Brings discernible worth.
It seems like the people
We've appointed ourselves
Condemn the rational
To an inescapable, illogical hell.
And I'm watching it happen
With unblinking eyes
As everyone I care for
Meets an untimely demise.
And they've got me too, now,
They've got me entrapped
My soul is for sale,
For what I've done is intolerable,
An unforgivable act;
I've committed a crime
By enjoying a plant.
Well you can leave your house
Yeah you can sure go outside,
But you'd sure as hell better
Not leave your own mind.
Cause being the Power
They can deny
Different states of consciousness
From those who refuse to abide
By the mundane drudgery
Of this byzantine life.
Needlessly complex,
Wretched and trite
They've got codes, propaganda
To make you believe
That they're right.
They can compromise nature
And lie about God
Rip out your heart
With a smile and a nod.
And of course there are other
Ways of getting by,
Of course I can try living
Without getting high,
But if I want a vacation
From traditional standards
Shouldn't I be allowed
To explore, to meander?
So they've gotten my soul,
Yeah they've got my steps tracked
But once I'm done with all this
Fuck them, I'm buying it back.
They can say something's wrong with me,
Something needs to be fixed,
Well I can make them believe
And I'll have 'em all tricked.
I can feign remorse
"I won't do it again"
Just lies to survive
And see this through to the end.
Even if it doesn't turn out
Quite how I'd like it to,
At least I've got self-satisfaction
And a humanist view.
'Cause this experience is mine,
It's exclusive to me,
And I've got no obligation
To any country.
Well they're taking my soul,
Just for now I'll be tracked
But once I'm out of their sight,
I'll be buying it back.

want-ad.

2007-03-10T03:45:58Z

I am currently searching for a fun, spontaneous, intelligent companion with whom to flee America.
Must be easy to talk to, lover of literature/art/film/music, hate the U.S. government/capitalism, have no problems with copious drug use, inspiring.
Preferably male and reasonably attractive (must take pride in appearance), but any soulmate will do.
Lots and lots of money is a MUST (I'm no gold-digger, but we won't get very far without it, now will we? Fucking capitalism).

I'm thinking Europe, but definitely open to other suggestions.
Applicants may apply here or via Myspace.

Hope to hear from you, future fleeing companion!

I'd do anything

2007-03-10T03:10:13Z

Right now, I really would.
ohpleaseohpleasesomeonecomerescueme.

I can't give much money,
But hugs are free.

And plentiful.

Eeeeeuuurgggh.

Clarity.

2007-03-04T07:46:42Z

In these times of such incessant haze,
Confusion,
Perpetual loathing,
It seems further and further a goal
To reach pure clarity.
But if you look in moments
Rather than movements,
You'll find it.
It comes in instances;
Not a permanent state.
It appears without warning,
Blindsides,
In the middle of a bitter
Winter night,
Full moon blazing,
Illuminating,
Washing clean, cold light,
Over everything that seems
So filthy and tired
Nine to five.
So unnecessarily familiar,
Killing with its driving
Destructive sameness;
The moon
And windless cold
Make good
On this world
That only seems to want
To let you down.
These moments of pure clarity,
Absolute vision,
They blindside you,
Appearing in the apparently ordinary,
Revealing themselves,
Rejuvenating everything,
Bringing new energy
To something you thought
You didn't want.

An array of largely ignored works of Yore

2007-02-26T19:49:06Z

This is a collection of poetry and stories I've written in the past six months.
I posted these as blogs on Myspace, but was dismayed when I (finally) realised that nobody really cares about art, poetry, or literature there.
So I decided to make a LiveJournal so as to have a medium where, hopefully, I would receive more recognition.

Here's everything thus far. I hope everyone (or anyone) enjoys them.

"When Someday comes, we'll shed our skin."
(poetry; 19 February 2007.)

Hey you, wash your eye,
For one day, I know
You will be tried
For the crimes that you commit
Against mankind, against the Earth.
And once it comes
You will sit,
You'll taste the shit
And lies you feed
To will us dumb,
Terminate Thought,
Denote possibility
Only in the material
Make life in the physical
The only way to derive
Satisfaction, a trip's a crime.
There's no correct paradigm, and
The one you set is flawed at best
Stealing the imaginary, visionary
From those seeking truth
And locking up dreamers,
Scheming your complex schemes
Concrete walls and homogeneous
Labyrinthine halls,
Fluorescent lights unveiling motives
Ingrained in greed.
It's all too bad
You stack the decks
And brainwash men;
You kill what's Right.
Transfixed with the constant
Advancement of Financial,
Capital.
When Someday comes,
My soul will laugh,
Oh the cosmic transcendence
Can leave you behind
In your self-created psychological
Prison, Your dollar bills
Infatuation with Things
And I hope in the middle
Of the transformation
Of humankind
Your things will shield you
From the fear and regret
You know you'll feel,
While I've shed my skin;
Soulfully transformed,
Integrated with the sun.
Because Someday I know,
We can all be One.

"Transcendent Ode."
(poetry; 28 December 2006.)

The most unreal thing you will ever grasp,
Gentle illumination by the glow of the past.
Elastic, elusive,
Plastic, conducive,
A light goes on
And promptly burns out;
Unduly devout,
I will eat the shards of glass
As they perforate your mercurial cries.
Tiny explosions go off behind your eyes
We'll take off for the ocean
And leave this unfinished mess behind.

Hope trapped underneath the sand,
Everything we'll never be firmly clasped in our hands,
This scheme not a scheme
But a plan undevoted.
All night we dream of future fortunes,
These wires comfort and conjoin us,
Content with a sound
A word,
A voice,
A lack of touch,
Turn back;
Rejoice.

We reside underneath the same sky
The same clouds above our heads so high,
Under the winter sun,
It's enough to break hearts,
Let's run
Straight into the devil's arms,
I promise to do no harm,
I'll change my mind;
Disarm.

And on this January morning
Devastation punctures without warning,
Intrusive,
What am I supposed to say?
It's never been this way.
No more splendor now,
Words cease,
The wire's cut,
Does tragedy birth a rut,
Derive inspiration, misfortune, disregard,
Or what?

What silences lying tongues,
Feet slip out from splintered rungs,
A truth that I can't ignore
Feeling washes onto the frozen shore
Can't deny this truth anymore,
A stalemate in this pointless war
But someone's locked the only door
And I can't escape
Again.

Catatonic on the inside
Context cannot be derived,
Shattered, frostbitten hearts contorted
Deceptive facades collide,
A lie aborted.
Content in a chemical life,
This is how I hide.

A face scarred by frozen tears
Paralyzing, cataclysmic fear,
"What if's" numb the silent air.
No one calls,
They don't dare,
He's sullen now,
Everything goes unrewarded
Wretched lies unretorted,
What do I say,
It's gone.

"With each day a little closer to the Infinite."
(musing/short story/whatever you want to call it; 26 December 2006.)

    There's a sound flying gracefully through the atmosphere, transcending space, destroying time, it calls our names like it's the last thing we'll ever hear. I laugh, stop, run outside, roll in the dirty snow, laugh again, think of someone I'll never know, then get up and start walking aimlessly toward nowhere, just for the sake of walking. The first ten minutes are uneventful, not that I expected anything to happen at all. I'm trying to follow this unexplainable, beautiful noise, but I cannot discern which direction it is coming from. I cannot explain anything. All I know is within the boundaries of myself. I cannot tell what I am capable of, the limitations are too great. I derive happiness from the creations of others; I wish to be able to do the same, but it is not nearly enough to wish. One has to be able to do. But in this moment, creation is unavailable. All I can do is walk and follow the sound. I'm directionless, but everything is okay. I think.
    Without warning, the sun materializes; it is through with its wintry hibernation for the time being. It illuminates, the snow glitters, but I don't know what I am supposed to do with it. And it like all good ideas, it is fleeting; it disappears back behind the blankets of gray littered across the sky. This story is directionless and requires more experience to create an interesting context. I cannot find the plot. My only inspiration is the inspired inventions of others. This is all I am good for. I am a literal, breathing experiment, I am the lottery, I live in fear of failure and inability to commit, I am selfish. The only subject I know is myself and all that I wish to become, but will never be. A car barrels down the icy road toward me. The sound flickers in and out of range. I walk to the proper side of the road so as not to become lifeless meat, as if I were something other than that already.
    What do I seem to be, I ponder, as steam escapes from my nostrils and mouth. If I were something other than what I am, would people think of me as a free-thinker, a real individual, rather than this idiot stereotype which seems to hang over my head. So he does drugs and likes cock, so these must be the only things for which his heart yearns. He lives only for a buzz, for another meaningless fuck, because these are the only things he could possibly want. But everyone sees what I let them see. Maybe I'll tell them off. Maybe now that we're supposedly all grown up, they can afford a sharp word or two. But it would all be lost on them, and all it would get me is my ass kicked. If it's too complex a thought to comprehend, confusion turns to anger and anger leads to a chase. Perhaps I can still outrun, lungs permitting. Don't they know I do this to experience a different way to think? Don't they see? I just cannot take the horror of reality so much. I am distraught through the realities of this life. Chemical dependencies give me a reason to keep going. Who says addiction is not a feasible purpose?
    I have not lost the sound yet. It haunts and taunts and tricks. At times, I feel it is right behind me, but then it flies miles away, becoming nothing more than the forgotten whisper of a ghost of someone you've always wanted to meet but never got the chance to. I can't understand why I am still walking. It has been nearly an hour, and it will be dark in another two. I don't know what I am looking for, but when you understand as little about yourself as I do, when you're as aimless as me, you'll do anything just to try to find a purpose.
    Fuck the plot. It's cold, my hands are cracked and bleeding, my nose is red, my legs hurt. I think I have walked at least two miles and darkness will surely come soon. I just want to change someone's life. I turn back now, and when I do, I think I hear the buzzing, teasing, beautiful sound fly off into the distance, just another goal I will never reach, another unattainable object in life. Walking toward home, I'm not sure whether I'm satisfied or disappointed. But then again, we're never really sure of anything. I walk back into the house, and swear I hear a buzz in my head, a faint yet glorious meaningful earthquake in time.

"When words kind of just come together."
(rant or something; 22 December 2006.)

   It absolutely does not matter how crazy I am. It's my right. I can be as off-the-wall fucking manic and antisocial as I want. I don't have to explain myself to anyone. I can live in my own damn head, I can dance when there's no music playing, I can laugh at trees and spin around in circles until I'm too dizzy to stand. The pace of life and the pace of my psyche do not have to exist in synchronicity. I don't have to explain myself when I walk through the halls muttering song lyrics to myself and hear someone randomly converse with someone else and use incorrect grammar and then grab them by the arm and shake them violently and rigorously and scream at them until I'm so disgusted that I'm unconsciously stranding together words incoherently and lose it all and start losing it so much I laugh and then start laughing so hard that I'm crying. And then when the tears turn to sobs and standing turns to rocking back and forth on the ground in the fetal position and I'm trying to think of a word that I can only faintly remember but can't grasp it as a whole, when I turn catatonic, I don't have to care that I'm being forcibly removed from the premises and told that I need "psychiatric assistance." It's just me. Society and I don't get along. You'll remember the rules, but I follow different ones. We have different doctrine. We operate on different planes of function. Tests are just tests and buses are buses that always come and there's always some kind of regulation to tell you how to do it when you're too scared to play by yourself. You don't need anyone else. What's the difference if I'm too fucking manic and "attention-deficit" to give attention to one thing for more than ten minutes? That's why I like this format, ladies and gents. I can just record the first words that I think of and call it "poetry". They've been doing it for centuries and I don't need to plot or organize. Flow is where it's at. NO SENSE? What? Doesn't matter. Literary devices and phrases. All I'm good at is remembering and emulating what I'm immersed with at the present time, and when I'm alone, I'm just an untouched block of clay. Is it wrong that I pray for tragedy just so I can see something different? Death's just death. Old age is just a pipe dream. Maybe I want to die next week. Maybe I'm selfish. Maybe my leg is shaking so uncontrollably that I can't think. Maybe I want to see a bus full of children crash into a tree and go up in flames just so I can get away from all the "supposed-to's" of this fucked-up game of connect-the-dots, just for a moment or a minute or an hour or a day. I don't care if you don't respond to me. I don't care if you think I'm a monster. I don't care if anything ever comes. I'll just keep it all inside from nine-to-five and ostensibly follow the rules then, and when I'm all by myself, I'll let the crazy manifest itself as it really wants, or the depression, or the intense desire for something to change. You wish and wish and wish for something big to happen, the desire begins to consume, but still, you find that after long enough, you know nothing is going to happen. So you just have to bite it and face the inevitability that if you want it to come, you have to do it yourself. Fiction or madness? I'm on the verge of something. This is what insanity feels like.

"The View from Afar."
(short story; written 3 December 2006.)

       Aimee sits next to me on this dilapidated, tattered couch. There's a blanket crocheted with love and dedication covering the holes in the cushions where you can see the stuffing trying to escape, wanting so desperately to tell a thousand stories of wonderful experiences long since passed. Tonight I'm a camera, testament to this unconventional gathering of misfits and deviants, and right now I'm comfortable with clarity and a cup of coffee that looks and behaves like oil for my soul and imagination. Tonight, I'm pleased to just watch the mania and unfolding in front of my satisfied, capturing eyes. My friend's eyes are saying something entirely different on this freezing but snowless evening in late November, not seeing the pale yellow smoke-stained living room walls in this appropriate first apartment, or the television on the floor on the other end of the room or the lonely, forgotten cigarette burning away idly in the ashtray like wasted potential, or Ann in the loveseat adjacent or Ann's cousin May sitting right next to her. The large coffee table in the center of the room is like a cluttered altar, littered with all kinds of remnants from our ceremony of sorts. Tonight, we celebrate independance, we embrace change, and the terror of finally being on our own. This is an excellent way to spend a school night, I think.
     Right now, none of us really know what Aimee is seeing as a plume of rich, blueberry-scented smoke billows out her nostrils and mouth and she shuts her eyes and concentrates on the inevitable sights and sounds that will take her off this world mere seconds from now. Sufjan Stevens croons and captivates, he conquers silence; his music is our savior and I'm in love with the sound, and I don't need to believe in anything but this life and right now and that knowledge anytime we want, it's like all we need to do is click our heels and pick up the phone and achieve instant escape. I think more deeply about this and I recognize and appreciate the irony that in order to fund all these strange and beautiful gatherings, I work for a mammoth, selfish corporation, entirely antithetical to everything I stand for. Selling my services for the almighty dollar, I am a whore. It doesn't seem right that I buying in to capitalism and this fucked up society of ours. I feel inferior that I am unable to think of a way to put this feeling into a marketable sentence. I revel in this hypocrisy, then light a cigarette for greater accentuation, but I'm glad that I contradict myself because it makes me that much more of an enigma and my mission in this life lately seems to be as alienating and misunderstood as possible.
     Aimee's still got her eyes closed, and all of the sudden she's got a huge, dopey smile on her face and she's giggling absent-mindedly and we all know that it's working. I look at Ann and Ann looks at me and May looks at both of us and we're all wearing the same expression that says, "oh yes oh yes, this should be good." We worship substance, the four of us, but this is what works for us and it makes us happy, so we've got absolutely no problem. The media and the government can eat themselves, because they're in bed with each other and they are obvious cannibals.
     "Thunderstorms?! What are you talking about? It was just clear a minute ago, why can't we just go sailing?!" Aimee is having a conversation with a sea captain. All of the sudden she gets up and waves her arms around and is saying something about eagles stealing her lighter and the Wizard of Oz. Ann and May and I are laughing like it's the last joke we're ever going to hear, trying to stifle ourselves as much as possible, remembering that we're not supposed to say anything so that Aimee's hallucinations are transmitted without interruption. We watch her, awestruck, wondering if maybe we could see these things too if we just tried hard enough.
     This is not where I had expected the night to take me, but I am very pleased with the direction it has taken and my head is full of caffeine, nicotene, and inspiration, among other things. There are no obligations, just here and now and our means of escape. School doesn't matter and I don't care that I've gotten none of my useless assignments done because I've only a couple months till I'm gone and nobody cares about senior year anyway. Work doesn't matter because it's just grunt work and merely a means to buy memories like this, the future is meaningless and global warming takes a backseat to Aimee flapping around on the floor because she thinks pirates are nailing her to a ship. I suppose the sea captain gave in.
     Aimee's coming down now but still obviously in a daze, and she's telling us all about what she saw, and we're filling in the details she doesn't remember, and everyone is laughing and right now life is full of purpose and wonder, hate is a dead word, and nothing matters but love, music, and the sea captain. Aimee hands me the bottle and my lighter and I take a deep breath for maximum efficiency, close my eyes, and get ready to embrace the unreal.
     Forget everything. Let's go sailing.

"Days (daze) die as they will."
(poetry; 30 November 2006.)

In the hours before night falls and we bid adieu to this pivotal age, this day which has started so long ago we can barely even remember it beginning, allow me to interject with these words, for they are the only ones you will ever hear.

Say goodbye to the things that you know and all the trivialities you base your life around, because they are mere Trojan horses that infiltrate the walls of your being.

This is a fact - the best memories cost a pretty penny and if they make good on their word and deliver as they say then you won't even remember them anyway.

The boy in the hallway with the menacing scowl and the dishevelled hair is a future resident of a maximum security penitentiary and no one is surprised, and the girl with the smeared black eyeliner with whom he locks his arm is a liar and a whore and she pitifully scams cashiers $30 at a time so she can do it all again tomorrow.

Daddy talks but doesn't speak and Mommy won't try to do either.

Bedtime is nigh but we don't so much sleep as pray for darkness to swallow us for good, while the bestial wind screams at man as it rattles the windows and snaps the dead branches of barren trees.

Little Miss Moffet sat in her bedroom counting all the complex, obscure words she doesn't know the meaning of in her dark, confessional teenage poetry that she'll post on her blog to attract all the right attention for all the wrong reasons.

We've all got our mechanisms to cope but we've been coping so long that we need to take more just to get away from our spiffy self-created realities, and we all play devil's advocate and we all play dead but when you look at the whole as the sum of its parts you think your head'll collapse because it doesn't add up, but then again maybe we just can't do math.

Nothing has to make sense and context is optional when you've got a car in the driveway and bills on the table and earbuds buzzing sound into your disconnected mind and pills in your hand and a bottle in the cupboard and the smile perpetually drawn upon your face, but none of it really has a damn bit of significance since the only love in your heart is for how high you can climb on this counterfeit social ladder you're trying to get to the top of, but you don't see me standing there at the bottom 'cause I've been hiding in the shadows with a different set of priorities and I've got a neat little buzz-saw in my mouth and it's chopping you down and I don't mean to ramble but I hope the fall hurts every bit as much as you imagine it will.

So I hope there's no context and I hope for the death of convention and when my words cease to come and we all cease to be I won't care that no one cares 'cause in my head, I'll be right.

"Unconscious Traveler."
(poetry; 2 December 2006.)

Memories not visited
In years and years
Return from the recesses of forgottenness,
And I cannot discern
What is
Real
From what is
Dreamt.
Was this an actuality,
Lost among the vast,
Hazy landscape of
Actual, known, true, concrete happenings,
Or merely a fabrication of an active mind,
Entranced,
Deep in slumber,
Which only seem accurate and real?

The lines,
They're blurred.

There is no distinguishing
Between the conscious
And the unreal.

The beauty of mind and memory
Is that whether you travel
Through the realm of
Physical and tangible,
Or spiritual and imagined,
Their records are all scattered
Throughout the same unclear, disjointed mess
Of the vault that we call memory,
So maybe there's no difference between the two.

"Garrison Finish."
(short story; 28 November 2006.)

At least I'm away from there for a few days. I can say that for sure. We came here to the city from the Podunk that we call home to visit family, the rational side of the family, because irrationality is so predominant at home hom that you just need to get away every few months or you think you might just give up at any moment and slit your wrists in the bathtub while listening to Tori Amos or something else depressing like that. But I soon find that even the family I thought was better is still not my cup of tea, I guess, because as soon as I enter the same room as any of them, all my little thoughts just run away and hide, maybe behind some mental bushes or trees or shrubs or whatever kind of foliage you'd like, and I'm left with nothing to say. This will happen around most people I meet.
    However, I'm alone now, so random words float into my head without context or conscience, and around these words I try to formulate sentences that will make paragraphs and paragraphs into chapters and chapters into stories that will get me noticed by the world and then finally allow some insight into this wretchedly strange, out-of-place, wandering lump of clay that is my being. I walk down the dark, winding residential street with a hood over my head and a cigarette burning idly in my right hand, thinking that I should stand in one place and devote my full attention to the nicotene I have waited so long to enjoy. However, I realize that at present, I am in civilization, where I cannot simply go anywhere I please in the middle of the night and stand and smoke because I am surrounded by houses upon houses without relent, and that it would probably appear a bit creepy if someone looked out their window and saw some lanky, hooded, goateed character standing in front of their house smoking a cigarette in the dark, by himself... especially with the reputation smokers are given these days. The harsh orange light of a streetlamp lingers maliciously just seconds away, and I wish for darkness, and for meaning, and understanding, and for at least one shred of order or control in my mind.  All the houses on this dark, winding street really are beautiful though, and I think about how anybody and everybody who owns one of these splendorous domiciles must have really worked hard to get one and how truly happy they must be, knowing that they've got a place in the suburbs. Fragments of hours past play back now, and I try to piece together the varied revelations, or what I construe to be revelations, of the night.
    People are people are people... even here, even in the city, this city for which I once yearned, even in this place I told myself day after day 'Yes, these are your people, these are the people you belong with... they get it...", even with all of their "enlightened" attitudes and opinions, and even if they all vote Democrat in every election and support gay rights and are pro-choice, they're still not like you. Maybe you'll just always be an inward, misunderstood, iconoclast. Maybe you're crazy. That's all it is, a game, life is a game. What happens happens. If I'm homeless, so be it. At least I'll have this voice inside my head. My head, where everything is right and I don't have to pretend to be anything more than the dead, moral-free, smoldering pile of ash that I am, where it all makes sense and I don't have to impress you.
    Huh. I think maybe I'm crazy, and maybe all the people that I learned about in history books, the reviled ones, the hated, the disturbed, maybe this is the way that we just dispose of the people who honestly do know the true ways of this world, the ones who become too much of a burden with their intellect. The truly bright ones are locked up and discredited and labeled insane. But their problem was that they thought change was actually possible. Nah.  Nothing will ever change, because human nature doesn't change. Those who are powerful now will just die and be replaced by someone who thinks exactly the same way they do and there will never be anything better than there is right now. But shit, you're in the city now, hey yeah, this is where it all makes fucking sense.
    And yet, I need people, I think. But only a select few. There's really only a few worth knowing, anyway. I can't fit in to any group but that's what you wanted I really can't. Maybe I'm just misanthropic. What I need is to go to a club and find the guy who's sitting in the corner alone being all misanthropic, who finds more comfort in disdain and cynicism than in dancing or drinking. I walk faster, I don't look up, I focus only at my feet, covered in Converse All-Stars and the frayed bottoms of my Lucky Jeans, at all the things I do to try to make it work. I focus on the lies that I wear to disguise myself to infiltrate the real world. I focus on a misshapen rock and I can't tell what color it is in the arresting orange light. I kick it and watch it careen forward awkwardly and I try to think of all the things that I have in common with the rock so as to make myself feel worse. I think that certain people start me up, get me going, open me up, unlock me, ignite me. Certain people are catalysts to me. I think catalysts is a good word and I try to imagine all the chemical compounds that are reactive to each other in this way but I can't because I never cared about chemistry. I can open up to anyone who says the right thing but it's kind of hard when I can never figure out what the right thing is. I try to think of stories but I can't because my mind is a horrible, messy jumble of arbitrary thoughts that lack direction, and there is no real plot at all.
    So I give up and start to run. I throw my finished but still burning cigarette at the ground and turn my head back to watch the dazzling array of sparks dance across the pavement. I run toward the park ahead and think about the shallow river thirty feet ahead of me, just beyond the paved path. I think about the dark. I think about the only boy I ever loved he was a catalyst he was a catalyst HE WAS A FUCKING CATALYST and I miss him so much it's like I'm being fucking stabbed in the stomach every time I think about him and yet I can't even shed a single tear. I think about the shallow river twenty feet ahead of me. I think about all the lines I have crossed, physically and psychologically, in the road and on sidewalks and in my head. I think about how that must be blood in my shoes. I think about how much of a tool I really am and how I only crave instant gratification and that I am no better than the people I find myself constantly loathing. I think about the shallow river ten feet ahead of me. I start sprinting and I'm breathing so hard that I think I'm going to collapse but I just keep going on toward the finish line, the bottom of that shallow river, but I get right to the shore and I stop because I think I've just had my first coherent thought in what feels like centuries. Who cares what happens? Even if I've got to go back to that Podunk shit hole, even if they mock me when I say "see you later" and accidentally say it in a somewhat feminine manner or tell me not to get any funny ideas just because I'm rolling out a log of cookie dough that vaguely resembles a phallus, well, that never really made any difference anyhow because their ignorance always really amused me. Even if I'm an iconoclast and no one believes what I say because I'm too manic or impatient to learn and I don't know how to support an argument. There's only a little bit of time left in my sentence. Then I'll be in a real goddamn city and maybe I'll be able to be a little bit better than I am now, and maybe environment affects my personality, but maybe I don't know a damn thing.
    I get up to walk back to the house where my mom and the rest of her family is sleeping, but in the midst of my revelatory thoughts and hopefulness, I neglect to see the rock just under my right foot and I lose my balance and I'm propelled backward, the back of my head becomes one with the paved park path with such force that Superman would be awestruck, and I can feel it reverberating in my teeth with a pain that's so defined that I can taste it, and I tumble down limply into that shallow river that my corpse now calls home. It's funny how arbitrary life really is. And I don't even mind one bit.

"Rocks."
(short story; 16 November 2006.)

I saw Oggy for the last time laying face down on his kitchen table, his teeth worn down to the gum, blood dripping out of his mouth into a dried rust-colored pool on the table. He did it to himself. He spent the last hours of his life manically grinding his teeth together, eyes twitching in all directions. He sat at his termite-infested, hole-ridden kitchen table like that for exactly fourteen hours, thirty-seven minutes, and eleven seconds. I timed it.

Oggy lived 8.6 miles out of town on a plot of land that was once used for farming, in a small one-story house that was once lived in by a farmer. It had not been lived in for some time when Oggy found it, and that was just how he liked it. After he dropped out of high school one year, two months, four weeks and six days ago, Oggy left his parents' house to pursue his own aspirations to become a chef, so he went out to the country to find the best place to cultivate his hobby. He found his choice abode relatively quickly – he spent a mere six days outside sleeping in ditches and beds of dead pine needles before he came upon the filthy shack in which he lived out the last years of his life.

When he was young, Oggy was ridiculously talented. In seventh grade, one of his teachers said they saw him solve a Rubik's Cube in less than two minutes – one minute and thirty-three seconds, actually. He played Chess against himself, this was because nobody liked playing with him because he always won - he could visualize several moves in advance and he would beat any opponent usually in less than five turns. Eventually, everyone else got sick of Oggy beating them so they just stopped playing with him altogether. Oggy didn't usually say much.

Because he was so smart, all the other kids became more and more intimidated by him. His superb intellect made them feel inadequate and challenged them, and most of his Pretty Blond-Haired 4.0 GPA Peers did not like being put in their place by a dark-haired, quiet boy who spent most of his time playing chess and solving Rubik's Cubes and writing thought-provoking stories and poetry in his notebook, so they generally avoided him, and Oggy started becoming withdrawn.

Oggy lived in a Beautiful Two-Story Three-Car-Garage Suburban Dream with his father and his mother, yes, his real father and his real mother. They loved him and thought he was the Best Child Ever, as every parent should think. They bought him clothes from all the fashionable shops at the local mall. They both drove Functional Family-Sized SUVs. Oggy had no brothers or sisters. He spent a lot of time listening to music by himself. His room looked like that of any other Suburban Wonder Child, complete with an Apple laptop, desk, posters of all his favorite bands, an acoustic guitar propped in the corner of his room, a closet full of all these Fashionable Clothes. He didn't decorate his room like this. His parents did. Had he been given the choice, he would have had it entirely blank. No wallpaper, no carpet, no curtains, no mahogany baseboard. Hell, he would have slept in a spare closet. Oggy cared not about these material things. Oggy wished only for intellectual stimulation.

Somehow, Oggy did make it to high school. He spent much of his time here like he did in middle school, except he was already, at the enlightened age of fourteen, entirely disillusioned with the whole of society in which he lived. All around him were people who played The Game and got straight A's, but did not display a single inkling of intelligence. Oggy saw it. I see it too. All these so-called "smart" people, these kids that all the other kids were supposed to model themselves after, Oggy saw through them. They mostly just wanted to follow along so they could get into the best Ivy League School that the could so they could get a Functional Job where they would make lots of money and buy all of the Good Suburban Niceties that they had now, and continue the legacy of their family while contributing nothing to benefit Mankind, only Society and the Economy. Oggy knew they had no interest in the difficult or socially-responsible or the thought-provoking or whether Democracy was truly fair or things like this. Oggy knew that they had no desire to really think about what was Right, only about what was Comfortable and Safe. I know these things.

This was about the time that Oggy was introduced to the Methamphetamine that is prevalent in rural and other impoverished areas. He bought it off one of the many Dealers at his school. He held these people in far higher opinion than he did the other Suburban Wonder Children. Oggy wanted to forget immediately about the terrors of society, of the hopelessness and the futility, of the Ignorance and Greed of the ruling class. So he just went into the bathroom and smoked it immediately without regard to Law or Regulation, and Oggy felt revitalized again. He felt like he could care about living, he felt Beauty and Purpose and Truth. He felt as if he were Super Oggy and he could do anything he thought of. The ruling class could do what it wanted; it could screw the world as much over as it damn well pleased. And this became the beginning of the end for Oggy.

Oggy dropped out of school exactly four months and two weeks after that. His parents were distraught and they were heartbroken, and Oggy was happy. Oggy had a new life now, a renewed passion, and he left town to go out and Create more of his new love. Once he found his abandoned abode, which I will not go over again as we have been through this part already, Oggy took a rusty shank he found in the Old Farmhouse and walked toward civilization. He was high all the time under the powers of the Methamphetamine, and seeing as he could do anything, he Jacked the first available car he could approach. If you can call sprinting toward a parked car at a stoplight as a Feverish and Ravaged Wolfman at full-speed, breaking the driver's side window, cutting the throat of the driver, and then flinging the now-lifeless body into the middle of the road "approaching," then that is exactly how he did it. Suddenly, Oggy felt an emptiness inside him. He looked down and realized it was three of his teeth. He thought nothing and then found the first Mart he could find, bolted inside, stole all the Cleaners and Medicines and other such Ingredients necessary for his concoction, then made it back to his Domicile and began cooking all that he would ever need to maintain his Happiness. He was happy. This is what he told me.

Oggy died laying face down on his kitchen table, his teeth worn down to the gum, blood dripping out of his mouth into a dried rust-colored pool on the table. A desperately mad, toothless smile was engraved upon his sore-ridden face.

"Vicodin-fueled musing."
(musing; 5 November 2006.)

When I float, I just float, and I don't have to question, I can just go where I am taken and be satisfied and completely elated with what I've got.
When I can forget, I have bliss. Complex, infuriating, corrupt, devastating, incompetent... when all the wretchedness of Everything simply disappears, I am content.
Who needs constant analysis? Why does everything have to be taken so seriously?
Can't everyone just forget? For just a day? Put aside politics, self-consciousness, giving a merry fuck what anyone thinks about them or how attractive they are, and just enter this gentle euphoria, an intricate, beautiful simplicity in which all is wonder. I am the only person in my world and I am very, very okay with that.
When you have thoughts, dreams, and hope, then you have found the real heaven. You're never happier than when in the midst of a beautiful, perfect dream.
Certainly everyone has been there, in that most wonderful dream where nothing you could conceive would ever be better, only to wake up and wish to have all of those things in the physical world. Why? You'd already just had it, but in another realm. That is heaven. In the dream life.
I could never be happier than when I am living in my own self-imagined utopia.
God is not a being. God is a state of mind. God is not this disgusting, hateful being that is manifested through the voices of the greedy and the ignorant. The organized would very much like you to think that God is a reward that you can only attain once you have conformed and compromised yourself to some kind of model that they set out for everyone to be. No. There is not one God for everyone. God exists in all of us, and no one has the same idea of what God is. God is found when you find yourself, and you have made peace with the world, and accepted it for the way that it is. You have found God when you can be comfortable with merely being a gleeful observer, feeling pure elation just knowing that you have the privilege of existing, when you can feel like the happiest son of a bitch on earth just watching the sun shine through the trees. When it hits the window at that early morning angle where merely seeing that brilliant, twirling haze makes you smile wider than anything you've ever seen before.

This life is everything. Don't follow some ideological pipe dream, wasting away all the beauty that exists in this life trying to reach something that simply cannot be real. This idea of an afterlife, it's a good theory, but it's just not realistic. Heaven doesn't come after life. Heaven comes here and now, just in short, brilliant bursts. And the beauty of this is that you can revisit it anytime you want with infinite signficance and fondness, through the power of your own mind. Memories hold more power than any bullet. Creativity and imagination, stronger than any bomb.

Now let's live it up.

"Stalemate."
(poetry; 8 October 2006.)

You think you know him;
No, you don't.
He doesn't even know himself.
He is a little machine,
He runs at half-capacity,
He is not receiving sufficient fuel.
His reserve is running low,
And there is no more in sight.
Who will be the one to step forward
And fill the tank?
Who will be the one to care
For his little black heart
That is progressively beating slower
Each and every day?
Not you.

There is a timer
And there is a bomb
And it is going to blow
Because the last defuser has called in sick;
All the others are dead.

There is a light blinking in the corner of my eye
It is slow and methodic
And it can stop time
And it can raise the dead
And I can turn it on and off
But I can't find the switch,
You took it with you when you left.

Look at my hands,
They bleed for all that could have been.
And for the future,
I'm so close you can taste me in your perfect mouth
With your lips of jade
And your heart of daggers
That cuts me every time it beats and I'm not there.
Look at all the blood I've shed for you.
It's not how you wanted it to happen
But that's just the cards we were dealt
So now I'm playing my hand
And it's a draw,
It's a stalemate.

Love doesn't exist,
It's just like a fantastic object I can't afford
Because I'm broke
And everyone else won the lottery.
And they're raving about it.
It's a movie I haven't seen
And it's not playing anywhere nearby.
And they're raving about it.

Stalemate.
No one gets it now,
But everyone gets it in the end.

"Catalyst."
(poetry; 18 September 2006.)

So what do I look like?
Do tell because I would love to know
What they think I am.
Am I a cliché,
Or am I a secret, buried under layers of notions
In a shallow, apathetic sandbox,
Am I a prime example
Or am I a prime example of what not to do?
The life inside me that begs to escape
That is trapped beneath
Wants to tell me to wake up
And stop all this
Because I'm taking the expressway
To becoming something,
Something I am far better than.

But nobody's better than what they think they deserve,
Or so they say.

"Thank you, Mr. President."
(short story/political rant/the one that started it all; 30 August 2006.)

The results are in and the consensus is this - the people love you, and you have vastly improved the lives of everyone!

We love you, Mr. Bush. LOVE YOUR WORK. You are doing an AMAZING job improving all of our lives for the better. Thank you so much. When I am up to my forehead in debt because I cannot pay off my student loans or finding a sustainable job because the economy has gone to shit and the poor are getting poorer and you and your buddies have all retired to their mansions or ranches to live out their days high above the rest of the majority of the world, we will all thank you. When you and your family are set for life while a a poor inner-city single mother with four children to suppose is working two jobs to make ends meet, I hope you sleep comfortably beneath your two thousand thread count Egyptian cotton sheets in your luxurious Presidential pajamas. I do!

Or when a victim of Katrina in New Orleans is barely surviving on the spare change of others that he collects by panhandling because his house was washed away because "nobody anticipated the breach of the levees" and nobody was told to evacuate. And his family, who all drowned amidst the flood or scattered apart with no possible hope of being reunited with each other again, or who took refuge in the Superdome and was continuously beaten and raped and taken advantage of every single day, they thank you too, sir!

You display an impressive amount of loyalty. It's really quite admirable. You really all take care of each other quite nicely. I wish my friends would do that same things for me that yours do for you, and vice-versa. I wish I could have no shame or integrity like you and Dick and Rumsfeld and Karl Rove and Katherine Harris and the rest of you. You guys really do make a great team up there on Capitol Hill. I just can't praise you enough!

If I could be as convincing as you, I'd be set for life too. When I lie, people tend to see right through it. But you! Oh, look at you. You are truly one-of-a-kind. With your kind eyes and average intelligence, boy, do people ever trust you. They can relate to you. You can spout off just about anything you like to the Christian, NASCAR-loving working class of the United States of America and they really do eat it all up. Hell, you could even tell them that Iraq was harboring weapons of mass destruction, and say that Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11, posing a major threat to our country, and that we absolutely have to go to war to stop them and that it was absolutely not about oil or profiteering! The little children of Iraq who had to have arms or legs amputated because of the stray roadside bombs that exploded while they walked to school thank you too!

And when I can't have a snowball fight with my friends in December because there is no more winter because you allowed the continued pollution of our environment because it was the most profitable thing that you and your friends could do, I'll thank you. So will all the other children who listen to stories from their parents about "snow" and how wonderful it used to build snowmen and come inside from the cold and relax by the fire with hot chocolate and a blanket wrapped around them. They'll thank you. And when I go camping by a river and find mutated fish and small animals dead on the filthy shores because you let all the corporations with their countless factories to dump all of their toxic waste there, I'll smile and know that it was all because of you.

And when I go to the fast food restaurant that I work at that constitutes "fine dining" in the predominantly poor conservative Christian small town that I call home, and I see the same family that eats there every day, all of them missing more than half of their teeth because they can't afford a dentist, I'll think of you. And their ten-year-old daughter who is already morbidly obese, 300+ pounds and taking an entire side of a booth, who already has respiratory problems and Type 2 diabetes because she eats this fried shit that is loaded with cholesterol and trans and saturated fat, while guzzling down sugary calorie-laden soda in a massive 22-ounce cup with unlimited refills and nobody things anything of it. Because her mother doesn't know how to cook and doesn't know any better. Because shoveling this disgusting shit is far easier than preparing a healthy home-cooked meal with fresh vegetables and fruit, and it's worlds cheaper, too. Because pumping this garbage into the stomachs of the ignorant is what will make the heads of the major conglomerates the most money and give them the highest profit returns at the end of each fiscal year. This is what they know. Fresh produce is simply out of the question for them, because they simply cannot afford it. Because it is far easier and far cheaper to provide a family such as this with a night out at a greasy fast food chain that you can find at every corner in every town in the country, where you can feed a family for less than $20 with 3000+ calorie meals that have no vitamins or minerals or any nutritional value whatsoever. This is their life, and they can't even see how futile it is, that this is how you have made it for them. Because you and your friends don't encourage them to aspire for anything more than what's easy. What the media tells them they should want. Reality television, cookie-cutter romantic comedies and action movies, the same twenty songs on the radio over and over again, nothing outside of the box. Mass-produced mainstream garbage that doesn't challenge the intellect but dulls it so you can continue to enslave them. And when that poor, sweet 300 hundred pound little girl grows up and is living the same miserable life in that disgusting hole of a town that she grew up in, doomed to repeat the same monotonous, hellish routine that her mother and father were trapped in, never going to college because there was simply no money for things like that, never aspiring to do anything creative or anything amazing because she was never pushed to, SHE WILL HAVE YOU TO THANK, MR. BUSH! Because she can't afford a car or vacations or books because now she too has three obese, toothless children of her own to support, there is no place in their budget for these things. Even if she could afford a car, it's not as if she could go anywhere with it, because gas is now $5 a gallon because of your pointless phony war and your friends who run the oil companies and all the other war profiteers are making more money than ever, gouging the American people for all they've got, out of shameless greed and want! YES! All because of you, this is now the reality of countless millions! They are trapped in this so-called American dream... this American pipe-dream. Mindless consumers of things that are killing them, but they don't even know it. They ALL thank you, Mr. Bush!

And when I come home to visit my parents some weekend when I'm in college, paying entirely too much for my education, when I walk down the sidewalk of my old hometown, and four poor ignorant good ol' boys in an ancient pickup truck shout that I am a fucking faggot who is going to burn in hell because God hates fags like me, when they beat the fucking shit out of me because I threaten everything that is good and moral and pure and righteous and I threaten the so-called sanctity of marriage, when I'm laying comatose in a hospital bed, a vegetable for the rest of my life, pissing into a tube with a nurse cleaning up my shit and nursing my bed sores, my friends and family will cry by my bedside, and they'll thank you, Georgie. They'll thank you for perpetuating the lies that you and your ultra-conservative cronies like Sam Brownback and Ted Stevens and all the other red state senators spread like wildfire into the heads of these good, church-going people in these small, ignorant towns, who allow this kind of propaganda and fear-mongering to continue so that they can stay in power and keep making their millions. And the poor fucking rednecks who did it to me who got away with all of it scot-free, who are now living the same pointless lives of pickup trucks and snowmobiles and hunting and NASCAR and Monday Night Football, living the lives of their fathers and grandfathers, and the inevitable lives of their own sons and grandsons and so on. They'll think they're living the good life, drunk every night off twelve-packs of cheap beer and whiskey, they'll thank you too, and so will their bruised and battered wives who don't know what else to do.

This is the new American dream, Georgie, and you made it. So we all thank you. This is the life GOD intended for us to lead! You've made everybody's dream come true. The weeping mothers of the 18-year-old troops who died in your war about oil and more money for you and your pals, they especially thank you. I would love to shake you hand, but unfortunately, I lack the capacity to do little more than shit, drool, and blink, so I'll just let my silence say it all.

Thanks, Mr. Bush! Your two terms in power have really done us all worlds of good. You're my hero!

Well, that's everything, I think. Congratulations (and thank you) if you've made it this far.
Let me know what you think, please please please!

Bennnnji.