Wait.
That's simply not possible.
Ah, yes.
the synthesis of human thoughts
belching out a stream of incoherent idioms
Ah, yes.
the degrading nature of a pot roast
screaming in the wilderness for sanity
(a little thing we like to talk about with absolutely no
relevance here)
I was a walking toddler
dancing to the tune of a million fairy freaks
looking inward and not outward
in the groove of vegetables and meat
FREAK!
INSATIABLE CAPACITY FOR IGNORANCE!
m o t i o n
in the region of your mouth
and not your brain. . .
LIZARD BOY!
COLD-BLOODED TURNIP!!!
Stick your finger up your nose
looking for the meaning of life
it's not there. believe me; i've looked before.
understandbutnotunderstandohnonotthegrits!
flowers in bloom.
bees buzzing -
after all what else are they gonna do. . . TELL ME THAT, OH
SACRED GURU OF KNOWLEDGE -
around those self same flowers
staring for hours
at the pretty pollen
(Pretty pollen? Come here, pretty pollen.)
books
Ah, yes.
the books,
the universe's information dump.
*YOU ARE HERE.*
Look in the fridge.
MAYBE THAT'S WHERE YOU LEFT YOUR LAST BRAIN CELL!
rEaLiTy is and is not just to the left of the moldy pot
roast.
~GET THAT BLOODY FRIED CHICKEN OUT OF THE HOUSE!~
**NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
take your friend fried chicken out of the garbage and
burn it in a stinking black barrel along with the macaroni and
cheese. maybe then it will make sense.
Tata, Muffy. Lovely day on the tennis courts. Fetch me a drink,
will you?
Command that sounds like a request!
Spill the peanut bloody butter on his lap!
Yeah!
Yeah!
That's what we'll do.
Strike up the cheese grits band! I'm comin' home for supper!
do you interface with the frequency i'm dismembering?
Ah, yes.
the sound of a goldfish
(in one of those ethereal blue-lighted aquariums)
drowning in the freak wave
happiness(???)
ha ha ha ha ha ha
endless tummy-gazing hours
blown apart in a nuclear atomic fission explosion
in one freaking phone call
Honesty is quite an interesting idea.
how am i supposed to know all this?
i'm still kind of new at all this.
cool and sweet . . .
refreshing introspective looks -
that's all I have right now.
When I say cool,
i don't mean the neo-Alternative meaning.
i mean kind of like a refrigerator
or a cool drink of water after walking into an air-conditioned
house on one of those scorching
it's-not-the-heat-it's-the-humidity
Florida (above one-hundred degrees on the Fahrenheit scale)
summer days that are infinite in both length and
intensity
half-awake
half asleep
state of semi-conscious omniscient immortality
felines flying into the sunset. . .
but you know that tape doesn't stop playing there
CRUSH CRUSH SMASH YOUR PRETTY LITTLE EMOTIONS!
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
i think i'm broken and shattered in a million little pieces
Hmm.
this is the happy ending i've fought so hard for
well i'll be.
This whole thing is retrograde
locked into one reality
Don't you understand?
Thoughts. . .
images. . .
thoughts ARE images
and images are reality
kind of on a different frequency, though.
this all paves the Way for my
Greatest Fear:
i am only an image
a symbol.
This is all so pointless I think.
There are too many levels of reality.
i hereby break them all down
(I.e. There is only one reality.)
I turned to my left and right all at once
and asked the free-floating wad of protoplasm
what it thought about the new state of reality
and it said, "It is and isn't Tuesday."
i took this to heart and sprouted fungi
and flew out of the sunset
(stupid monkeys. . . why do they like classic Greek theatre?)
resting my feet for a while by walking around.
A couple of intelligent hamsters scurried through my torso,
complaining about the high tax rate.
it was then that i realized,
"My God. There's no atmosphere."
Realizing I shouldn't be able to breathe,
i stopped immediately and four disgruntled tarantulas
flew out of my armpit.
While fading in and out of existence
with a friendly bucket of green peas,
a wheelbarrow pushed by William Carlos Williams
sunk past my brain
(incidentally, it wasn't red. Being color blind, I can only guess
exactly what color it was.
But I am sure of this. . .
it was either
green
or grey!(i think))
Shakespeare was
vomiting out of a ditch, screaming something about trash
entertainment.
i'm here
i'm not
i'm here
i'm not
what does it matter anymore?
so i continued my lively conversation with the green peas until
we met a bucket of marbles
(steelies if you want to know! The kind that you find in the
bottoms of spray paint cans)
and the two had green paint balls for children
dismayed that the vegetable i believed was my friend had left me,
I sold my soul to a side order of chicken.
(Of course, that didn't last long either. She wanted to be fried
instead of baked.)
i took a stroll through the produce section of the local video
store
and caught a computer virus.
I sneezed out BASIC programs in my spare time while repeating the
phrase "puppy dog go home."
i guess that lasted about three or four minutes.
I WAS CURED!!!
i wasn't paranoid; but, quite frankly, I was tired of the
government's attempts to watch me
(especially when I got in the shower or ate fungus)
so i went to speak with THE OMNISCIENT PILE OF SAWDUST
i said, "Hey, man. What's shakin'?"
he kind of grunted and blew daisies in my face.
so much for that
i met a French nationalist that spoke Spanish with an English
accent. He picked up a gumball and quickly shoved it up his
nostril saying, "No puedo hacer m‡s, se–or."
i took his gentle advice and paid to watch two children learn
arithmetic.
then i met my anti-person (made entirely of anti-particles) and
shook hands.
our hands erupted in a cloud of energy.
This set off a chain-reaction that stopped with a big
BANG
the monkey ran up to us -
even though we didn't really exist (we actually fictionally
existed on a semi-conscious symbolic level) -
and said, "Darn it. It still is and isn't Tuesday. I'm going
to miss Antigone."
Taking my cue from an old 8-ball,
i aimed for the corner pocket
and headed down the street
for a little spin around my subconscious mind.
A little cartoon mouse scurried away
from a big cartoon cat,
bringing me memories of childhood.
A small car drove by with a driver that was dressed up as Death.
He honked the horn and waved as if I should know him from
somewhere. He swerved and pronounced the unfathomable to
passers-by.
It was then that i stopped on the sidewalk and concentrated all
of my mental energy on moving parts of my anatomy that simply
don't exist.
I resumed my pace and walked into a nearby hospital for tea.
The doctor quickly prescribed my tea with lemon and sugar. (It
was actually quite good.) Sipping my tea in the Emergency room, a
child passed me with a swarm of doctors passing him. I started to
follow but didn't want to get bogged down in that narrative.
The French nationalist, I noticed, was right behind me smiling
and whispering, "Es hermosa."
The hospital disappeared
and I noticed that i had been waiting in long lines.
Who's to say?
the slight taste of lemon was still hanging in my mouth as the
intelligent hamsters walked along the crowded interstate and
discussed the literary achievements of e.e. cummings.
I suddenly felt the desire to sing,
but the only song i could think of was "The Star-Spangled
Banner."
I heartily sang the first few lines;
and before long several small children had joined in the chorus
with beautiful smiles on their faces.
Being inclined to agree with the sentiments of the French
nationalist, I thought that this moment was indeed beautiful. At
least until the old drunk drove by in a big American car and
smashed their little skulls on the road. the old drunk stumbled
out of the wreckage and put his hand over his heart with a great
thump. he began emphatically stuttering the pledge of Allegiance.
(i think it was at this point that America died.) Several
skinhead garbage men drove by to pick up the trash from the
affluent houses in the next city. Not that it had anything to do
with anything else; but, at the very least, anything didn't care.
I heard the strains of free-form jazz and knew that at least our
souls were intact.
(i met my soul once. he was a rather nice fellow.)
i saw a pair of neon orange sneakers dangling from a nearby
nowhere.
the smell was horrible so i quickly walked some more.
i passed
an old stinking bum
that had all but one of the files in his brain deleted
he just sat there
drooling all over himself.
I kicked him in the face
and said,
"How's that for input?"
i felt saintly and quickly named a church after myself.
an old priest came up to me and talked in Latin; but, to be
honest, I didn't really (or fictionally) understand him.
it wasn't long (even though time is really and fictionally
subjectively relative) before I found myself swimming in an ocean
of beautiful women.
the odd thing was
i didn't really care anymore.
I think it was beaten out of me.
I received a call on my portable telegraph that brought news of
jubilation mingled with intense personal pain.
(to be honest, the whole thing blew me completely off-center.)
i sat for a while in the midst of nothingness contemplating what
to say in reply
then nothing at all struck me, and I decided to leave the whole
thing alone.
the intelligent hamsters wandered by, discussing the more radical
aspects of the Great Enlightenment.
Rounding the corner,
I shifted reality into neutral
and coasted straight past a line
of people withdrawing money from the bank and then eating it.
Some fried it in butter
or grease,
but the health-conscious
preferred to eat it with a Fat-Free Bleu Cheese Dressing.
i wanted someone to walk up to me and tell me what a jerk i was,
but it simply didn't happen.
okay.
so i'm walking along.
all the sudden, i see this girl sitting by the side of the road.
seemed pretty despondent to me. . .
on the verge of tears.
so i stopped and gave her a hand. i said,
"Excuse me, Miss. Can I help you up?"
She agreed and i lent her my hand.
we walked along for a while discussing our common interests.
(i wanted to hold her hand and kiss her)
this lasted for a little while.
then she went along her way
everyone is so much cooler than me.
I screamed out after her.
"DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND!!!! I LIKE YOU FOR WHO YOU
ARE!!!"
but it was more like a soliloquy.
after all,
no one really cared to hear it.
Well, at least I still had my sainthood.
While I was sitting in my newly-rediscovered solitude, I noticed
the French Nationalist off in the distance.
"How are you?!?" I shouted.
his reply was somewhat garbled, but I could clearly hear him say,
"Es hermosa."
I wandered into a local supermarket, looking for a loaf of bread.
masses and masses and masses of the poor indoctrinated. . .
the poor soul that checked me out talked on reflex without
comprehending.
How are you doing today?
Actually, kid, I've had a heck of a day.
Well, that's good. It sure is pretty outside today.
I hate the hot weather.
Well, I can certainly understand that. . . One, twenty-nine. .
. Okay. . . Out of Twenty?
Eighteen, seventy-one is your change. You have a good evening.
I smacked him in the face really hard with a copy of 1984.
He kind of blinked, and I saw a new awareness in his eyes. He
walked straight out the door with me.
How many aren't so lucky?
I walked into a green pasture and began eating grass. i found it
very fulfilling. but reality sent me back.
Herds of people
milling past me in the
slate-grey city-scape.
I reached out to touch
one of them
(because i was a bit lonely)
Immediately he turned into a pile of dung.
I stopped a young woman passing by
with a directness i had just inherited from my ordeals.
She also turned into dung.
By this time, I was feeling like King Midas.
I sat down on the pavement and pondered the value of the
non-existent emotionless.
The girl from the side of the road walked up behind me and rested
a hand on my shoulder comfortingly.
Tears of joy flooded my soul.
This was a moment that bisected a thousand other moments that
only happened somewhere in my brain. . .
I love you. . .
Would it be a good thing if I were to ask to hold your hand?
But in the end we sat there in honest silence.
As she turned to walk away,
someone died deep inside; and
she didn't even know -
or if she did,
she didn't acknowledge it.
The complex system crash of raw infernal emotion
made me touch a hand to my cheek
to wipe away a bloody tear.
Have a cappuccino.
I turned down University Avenue at the yellow light
with my watch clearly saying, "A quarter past eternity,
mate."
There just down from the taco place
I saw Jesus helping a drunk stagger into a cab.
He gave the driver directions and his fare and closed the door.
He didn't look holy -
at least not the way most people define holy.
He was wearing a pair of old jeans that were cut off at the
bottom instead of hemmed
and a T-Shirt that was streaked with the drunk's vomit.
No, most church members wouldn't consider him holy;
but he was definitely angelic because he beamed with love for the
despised.
As he walked over to me,
he pushed his hair back away from his face, but the wind quickly
blew it right back.
He had a smile beaming on his bearded face as he grabbed me and
hugged me.
(Somewhere down the street, I heard the French Nationalist say to
the intelligent hamsters, "Es hermosa," which
sent them off into another round of meaningful debate.)
I looked Jesus in the eye and thanked him and turned to walk away
again on my gelatin feet.
Walking down the road,
I gazed to the back and
gained a set of wheels. Driving
down the road
searching for adventure at 55 miles per hour.
I stopped at a green light and invited some friends for a ride.
a hippie with a broken heart.
a missionary punk.
a tortured soul in touch with the world.
a dark-haired girl with a bright smile and soft lips.
We were on the road like something out of a Kerouac novel.
what's there to say?
the hippie shared her broken heart with me. the punk helped me
understand. the girl in touch with the world showed me the value
of friendship and what an idiot I was. the dark-haired girl made
me invincible.
Of course, the car couldn't last forever. When the engine died,
everyone went their separate ways. The punk and the hippie found
an unholy balance that I never seemed to understand. The
sensitive girl cried more tears than she deserved. My dark-haired
girl discovered her own motivation.
I kicked the tires for a while.
in my place, wouldn't you?
I turned up the tape to block out the loneliness,
but ,you know,
things can never be the same.
With the new set of rancid situations,
a new but surprisingly familiar feeling of loneliness
set in. With it was a dark swirl of a myriad of emotions
around me threatening to crush all the sensibility that I thought
reality had.
After sitting on the hood of the car for a while watching the
ghosts of the past run rampant in my brain, i decided it was time
to fade into myself for a while.
It was then that i departed on the grandest pilgrimage of my
life. Ostensibly, it was a tour of various cities and countries.
. . some traditional. . . some modern. . .
and an endless parade of churches.
More importantly, it was a pilgrimage into myself.
Somewhere on the traffic-ridden Roman streets, I gained a sense
of myself because of the ancient ruins of civilization. I learned
about beauty and felt more powerfully what I had lost as I gazed
at the Eiffel Tower from the Seinne river. In London's night-time
streets, I realized what the missionary punk had been saying all
along over a stout cup of tea.
An island from the insanity as my insomnia came in handy. Awake
to watch every detail as we left.
As i settled down to rest for the first time in twenty-two hours,
i yearned to breathe that air again and - dreaming - vowed
to return.
As you ate the chicken,
I watched you sicken
and die.
I have this theory.
We don't all think alike.
We don't all see
hear
feel
taste
alike.
Just like each one of us organizes our rooms and offices in our
own unique way,
we each organize our neural pathways in different ways.
That's why we're all different.
I was quite offended when they compared me to the common man.
(No! Never the counter! Please not the counter!)
pulling up the rosebuds blooming in the toxic waste.
wandering the rooms in the old house for an eternity of moments.
Perhaps I've digressed, but the cappuccino is still an excellent
choice.
Feeling somewhat isolated in my madness,
I began to pull even more inward -
that is until I finally turned myself inside-out in the fusial
world of imagination.
When the calvary arrived they tried their best, but slowly my
better-than-imaginary friend faded into the great hereafter.
Now i think i know how all the king's horses and all the
king's men felt.
After all we had done for each other, in his darkest hour i
wasn't able to do a thing except cry into the arms of an angel.
As you ate the chicken,
I watched you sicken
and die.
Inside-out and faded,
I continued to unload in the white zone.
Go ahead and kiss that high-octane maiden.
(I sure wish I had that option.)
Looking to my peripheral vision, I noticed a legion of Christian
soldiers waging war on the non-believers.
Blessed are the peacemakers . . .
I fell in with a tribe of urban freestyle skaters. I understood
perfectly, but - alas - I could never skate.
Suddenly, I found the sound of an earthquake oddly soothing.
If someone has no nerves, how can they itch?
I took up my residence in the library with the intelligent
hamsters.
We studied for the pure sake of knowledge.
Until the French Nationalist wandered by and felt that our
knowledge was a threat to the coherent nation-state.
He took the intelligent hamsters and squeezed them one by one
until they met their tragic end.
"EscuchŽ, Se–or," he said, "Es
hermosa."
With that exchange, he left for regions unknown.
But the question that lingered in my mind was "Can he make a
good French omelet?"
I guess it was really irrelevant.
After running a battery of medical exams (which many graduate
students flunked), a doctor pronounced that indeed I was more
machine than human. However, to some degree I was compatible with
humanity.
I installed a computerized touchpad on my rear end, but every
time I sat down it beeped.
I really wish those morons would stop pushing that gas pedal on
that loud piece of junk.
All they have done is annoy me,
and sometimes cappuccino loses out to a good cup of English tea.
As I continued my quest
in this epic land with distant heroes,
I found the nuclear family seated around the supper table -
fusion-powered, if you must know.
(This, of course, blocked out certain transmissions from the
derelict souls; and who could contain their occasional violent
outbursts?)
Too many folks in this age are fission-powered.
There are only two routes to pure love:
time
and
death.
True love must be symmetrical; that much I've learned (too often
the hard way).
But what I want to know is this:
What will happen if you replace it with anti-particles and
reverse the flow of time?
Okay, so God's omnipresent.
That means He's not just at every point in physical space just at
this moment. He's at every point in time simultaneously (because
Einstein proved that time depends on space and space depends on
time). Past . . . Present . . . Future . . . It's all kind of
irrelevant to Him.
Follow me on this.
God can be at all points in space-time because He's omnipotent,
and God is omniscient because He exists at the sum of all points
in space-time.
You dig?
Because God is infinite in volume, He is symmetrical at all
points;
and, because God exists at all points in time, He doesn't change
with time. (I.e. "He's the same yesterday, today, and
forever.") Therefore, God is always symmetrical about any
axis; and the flow of time would have no effect of His state.
Since God exists at all points in space-time, He includes both
particles and anti-particles - the sum of the created
universe. The concept of particle and anti-particle quite simply
is not relevant.
And God is Love.
And Hate is the absence of Love.
Somewhere back East,
Einstein's giving a lecture on special relativity
in a room full of Neanderthals.
The Future Leaders of America are puking in
the toilet.
But in my dreams I'm dancing again.
A little closer than reality.
Feeling the understanding -
the connection.
Violet dreams.
Violent pain.
Turn that thing down, will ya?!?
But - you know - I just don't like Shakespeare.
Yes, sir.
Now mark these words.
In the center of the sky, there was a great star that commanded
the attention of everyone.
At the peak of its stellar career,
the star went supernova,
leaving behind only a small, white dwarf
(which of course would eventually die).
The gaseous matter thrown off in the explosion
coalesced to form a nebula.
Out of this nebular cradle were born fifty stars.
And everyone marveled at the significance of the stars.
"It is a sign from God," they all said;
but it affected me not at all.
It's not that I didn't like the new stars;
it's just that they were really no different than all the other
stars.
Besides,
I think I would have known if it were a sign from God.
The fiery prophet told
a tale
red like blood,
sweet like honey,
with a dash of hot sauce.
Munching a bowl of lettuce
covered with ranch dressing,
I watched as an inter-species alliance waged war on entropy.
Alas, cellular death met them all with a bio-physical grin.
Have you ever met your soul mate
then questioned the existence of such metaphysics?
After losing a piece of my subconsciousness,
I began to offer a sacrifice at my musical altar -
big piles of power tools, extension cords, guns, electric razors,
nails, violence, stubbornness, and motor oil
which I immediately set aflame.
Realizing that every time I cared
I was just another heretic,
I began to nail myself to the altar;
and, at least on one level,
I never moved off.
In the shadows of the twilight,
i became little more than a background image.
an ashen spectre haunting peripheral sight and memory.
existing in a different realm. dimension.
unable to use complete sentences.
i lost the capacity to care.
it doesn't matter anyway.
ingesting physical substance
to seem real -
just because there's nothing else to do.
i'm black-and-white in a world of color TV.
the dull throb of a headache that doesn't exist.
there's so much to do.
there's nothing to do
except embrace the institution.
subjective existence.
i'm a parallel processor with no tasks.
a rainbow of greys.
neither a smile or a frown.
brain-numb in the mental fog of normalcy
and linear time and values are non-existent in the present.
As you ate the chicken,
I watched you sicken
and die.
The long day at last faded to night,
and I began to wander through a Gothic mansion with an infinite
number of finite rooms.
A nursery with clocks set ahead by one hour and five minutes. The
room was warmer than the rest of the house with the persistent
smell of mashed potatoes and pot roast.
A tall-ceilinged room reminiscent of a Cathedral and lined with
shelves of broken porcelain dolls - dolls with angelic,
sacred, feminine faces now cracked.
A library with three volumes detailing the failure of the human
condition.
A bathroom with an unflushed toilet.
An anteroom with a cracked mirror on the wall that could only
speak the truth. Looking into the mirror, I saw a thousand things
at once -
A psychology book burning a sociology book.
A group that wasn't made up of individuals.
A taco in a soft tortilla shell.
A shadow lurking in the perpetual twilight.
A pale-skinned vampire feeding on the personalities of others.
A subway train filled with punks and angels.
A list within a list within a bowl of miso soup.
A book with the wrong answers in the back to throw everyone off.
A Shakespearean tragedy in 70's jive.
A frog that couldn't stand tadpoles.
An internal palace with no external structure.
A weeping clown.
Infinity with a side order of grits.
Wouldn't you say that night has a certain lucidity?
As I reached the outskirts of the primal garden that surronded
the estate,
I began to think about why it is that sailors have to know how to
swim but airmen don't have to know how to fly. But, anyway . . .
The garden was as dark and gothic as the house, being watered by
the tears of mortals and immortals.
In one region of the garden, one flower burned with a flaming
silence; and the flower's name was Journey's Everlasting Morning.
Journey's Everlasting Morning indeed brought light into my
darkened consciousness. I wanted nothing more than to take
Journey's Everlasting Morning with me on the rest of my journey,
but Journey's Everlasting Morning shared her roots with a blue
wildflower. Nothing I could do would separate Journey's
Everlasting Morning from the wildflower without killing her in
the process. I stumbled blindly out of the garden with the saline
taste of my tears still flavoring the ground that Journey's
Everlasting Morning searched for nutrients.
In the greater schemes
of hopes and dreams,
it doesn't matter anyway.
The night was dark.
I mean really, really dark.
It was black ink spilled and pooling on a black canvas.
It was coal painted black.
It was burned turkey basted in crude oil.
It was apparently a series of bad metaphors.
In this darkness, I reached a mental crossroad
where beginnings intersected endings.
I fell to my knees and offered a prayer of desperation
as psychological friction at last brought me to a stop with our
minds scarred with images of each other.
I began to feel like I was the lab rat in some cosmic experiment.
I'm not really human.
I'm actually from another planet.
Or maybe I'm just an experimental android.
I was given to my parents when I landed
(was activated . . . emerged from the sea . . . )
Since then, they (not my parents, mind you - they - the
people behind all this) have been watching me in various ways.
They put video cameras in the showerheads.
They're behind every mirror.
They put a microchip in my brain so they could track me.
They have listening devices all around the house.
Everytime I go somewhere, they make copies of everything I write.
Sometimes I think they can even read my thoughts.
They're writing all of it down in their little book
(file folder . . . clipboard . . . computer database . . . ).
One day, I'll die; and they'll analyze the data.
Or maybe they'll finish the experiment before I'm dead, and then
they'll just lock me up in a cage.
One thing's for sure - everyone's in on it.
All of my successes and failures are carefully planned and acted
out in this grand project.
Nothing is real, and I can't escape.
After having an introspective discussion with reality's
only known zero-sided polygon,
I reached the conclusion that love is just another psychological
disorder.
I also finally admitted to myself that there is such beauty in
orthogonal sets.
And raisin bran is a powerful breakfast weapon.
And fire is beyond mere sentience and intelligence.
And life is symphonic open-form poetry.
In other words:
The past is a ghost.
The future is a dream.
This day is a day to change reality.
Pulling myself out of the muck,
I raised both arms to the sky and raised my battle cry
in a prophetic and convicting voice.
I'm tired of living with one eye facing behind.
I'm tired of wanting to be the center of a blue-eyed universe.
I'm sick of auditioning for the starring role in your blue-eyed
dreams.
It's quite apparent that all those quests are doomed to failure.
You've found your dimension, and I'm afraid that it doesn't
include me in its parameters.
I'm a verbal engineer.
Why? Because there is an intuitive logic of the word whether you
see it or not.
One doesn't know the answers and meanings - one has to feel
them.
Mere facts will never help you understand.
I'm a sinner, but that doesn't prohibit my sainthood.
It all boils down to the limit of me as I approach infinity.
There is no equality.
I will repent,
and we will forget
all the things that might have been.
I will smell the flowers, but I will not pluck them.
Question the questions.
Answer the answers;
and, above all, find the soundtrack to your life.
I have found my escape velocity,
and I fear that I must create some universal critiques.
I am going to taste the sunshine.
I wish you the world, the universe on a string, and a little
green frog that will turn into your prince.
Sadly, I am no amphibian.
Las estrellas brillaban, mais j'etais mort.
I walked into a business office in (appropriately)
a business suit;
but, you know, they laughed at me because -
Heaven forbid - I had unknowingly selected a tie
that didn't match.
The next day I showed up naked.
I guess I showed them.
Hate drove up in a big pick-up truck
armed with a marvelous arsenal of epithets.
With a smile and a wink,
I dismissed him
and heard my entire life in a trumpet solo.
Then, I knew that my life had been more
singular than plural,
and it was about time for
a meatier meteor.
Just quit your fakin'
and bring home the bacon
and grits -
Oh, yes!
The grits.
Meanwhile,
a couple of cubicles down,
an eager young executive
mistook a green paintball for a lime gumball.
As he sprinted for the toilet,
somewhere a steel marble
and a bucket of green peas
screamed in anguish.
Somewhere else entirely,
God was reading a book on Quantum Physics and laughing
hysterically.
"Je t'aime, mon amie," screamed one
million voices in my head.
As I blindly rounded a corner,
the abstract forms of a legion of boogeymen
pointed at me accusingly, chanting,
"You love her! You love her!"
I clamped my hands over my ears and closed my eyes to block out
the reality that I knew existed.
Instead, I merely exposed myself to the afterimages of flashbulb
memories burned into my brain and heart that I thought I had left
behind long ago.
I held on to those blue-eyed afterimages, looked deep in my
heart, and found love that had never died.
I love you.
It was the word of God.
It was jazz.
It was poetry.
Holding it before me like a crucifix, I used love to chase away
my personal demons.
I fell in love on rainy days
because the sun is much too bright.
While passing through a nursing home,
I saw a wagon with a broken wheel;
and I understood
that angels die -
much like dreams.
My tears were dry, silent,
and - some would (foolishly) say - non-existent.
In my grief,
I remembered a tale about
a bat, a chicken, and a modest proposal (now rejected)
with a sad, painful smile.
Truth is in some ways both a painkiller and emotional torture,
but it is absolutely essential
for love and existence.
The time between finger snaps
can be eternity.
Insanity is only a song away,
and the dance never stops
in the sky or in my mind.
Sometimes I feel like I should be out there
in the night,
but there are no smiles
or hugs.
I feel the night
with a piece of my soul that I left
behind years ago
in the care of a friend.
(I stalked the night with wink and some tears.)
Have you ever tasted the detail of a medieval fresco
or touched the flesh of Rembrandt portrait?
Have you ever felt the burning colors of a Van Gogh evening?
Observe the banality of the feudal fresco. Ah, the symphony
within a symphony within a bucket of dirt. There is never
absolutely nothing.
And timing is the connection between the end and three hours of
blissful wandering.
The past never seems to change, and the dreams never fade.
But the fresco is still there.
The portrait is breathing,
and the colors burn with eternal warmth.
Immortal.
Millions of paintings
in thousands of churches
in thousands of homes
in the eye and heart - no the very soul - of one admirer.
I realized at last that I had forgotten to blink; and, with the
momentary interruption,
the spell was broken.
Allowing myself to fade into the art once more,
I pondered love as the sublime.
How many hearts broken...How many tears shed...How many
peals of laughter...How much sublimity from the hands of one?
The hands of one touch the hearts of many,
and I am no different in the end.
The lover is the artist.
The masses stand in awe,
and I fade in
then out
into nothing,
dreaming of sublime existence.
I found myself lying in the gutter,
pondering sublimity.
I decided that I had frowned around for far too long.
I picked myself up and danced in the manner of children and
fools.
Dreams are like eighties movies.
There's never love in the beginning. That ruins the plot.
Themes of discovery.
The outcast doesn't find a home in the mainstream.
Instead, he draws the mainstream out of conformity
and, in doing so, finds love and lightning.
Yes, I pondered this with a smile.
This is substandard, but that's the way it always begins.
I picked up the lives I had manufactured and played the games of
children.
I remembered a poetic groove, brother;
and I got thirsty.
I popped open a can of soda
and dealt a game of solitaire
with a big lightning rod in my hand like a scepter.
I am the king.
Every time I see you,
I fall in love again.
Walking in a daze,
I felt the need to pray.
I walked into the door of the nearby church,
seeking some inner peace;
and, instead, I found a wedding.
Juliet had found someone else.
I wept -
but not for the usual reasons.
As I looked at the angelic young bride
dressed in her whitest gown,
I wondered how fresh
and innocent we really were;
and I knew that it was a sin
for a man to love an angel.
The couple sealed their vows with a kiss,
and I lost everything.
The two became one, and I
merely remained
zero.
A hole is an emptiness - an island of non-existence in an
ocean of existence.
Is it right to say,
"There is a hole,"
since, in doing so, you are declaring that
non-existence exists?
Likewise,
It seems even more wrong to say,
"There is not a hole,"
since this seems to mean
that there is no emptiness in the specified object.
However, there are no verbs of non-existence.
How many times have I
pulled myself out of the
gutter with some
GREAT NEW EPIPHANY
only to fall back to my knees
again and crawl back to my hole?
Prophets and poets take on the sufferings of the world.
Poets are broken everyday,
and prophets become martyrs,
but neither ever dies.
I was again broken out of my mental revelry by an urge to sing.
I began to sing a song of my own invention -
a song that consisted solely of harmony.
It was at about this time that the French nationalist came up
behind me
and tapped me on the shoulder.
I was startled and immediately stopped singing.
I turned around and saw who it was.
As I started to speak, he put a finger to his lips,
whispered "Es hermosa,"
and walked off before I could speak.
Suddenly, I felt like one pole without another to define my
existence.
In the whole of an infinite universe,
there is only one melody for every harmony
and lots of cream and sugar for coffee.
You know how a song just gets stuck in your head
and you end up humming and singing it all day
wherever you go?
That's what happened to me.
I sang the harmony song everywhere I went the rest of the
day -
In the bookstore.
Down the sidewalk.
Past reality.
Out of dreams.
Into nightmares where the sun shines bright and people are happy
and in love (but not with me).
Finally, I plopped rather unceremoniously down in a tiny booth in
the dark corner of a little diner, which gave me a perfect view
of the streets and the rest of the diner.
I ordered a cup of coffee - not because I really wanted a cup,
though. I merely wanted to watch the steam float slowly upwards
toward the dim lights on the ceiling and disappear before it
could ever reach it.
I turned my eyes toward the others in the diner without ever
really moving my eyes. It was actually more like I just focused
them on the people for the first time since coming in.
I watched as the old men sat at the bar,
Eating their ham and eggs ("all-nite breakfast")
Talking about college football
Taking a gulp of black coffee
Talking about the abnormal weather
and finally finishing up their meal and lighting up a full-flavor
cigarette while the waitress filled their coffee mugs with a
fresh pot of coffee.
I looked down at my own cup and realized that the steam had
stopped. I finished off the lukewarm cup and looked at the
grounds that had settled at the bottom of the mug. Noticing that
bit of coffee that never seems to leave the cup, I began swirling
it around slowly, methodically, for no reason whatsoever and
humming my little song in the monotone that is harmony in a sad
song. This was no pop ballad - no gold record multi-platinum
"go-get-your-copy-‘cause-all-your-friends-have-it"
song. Rather, it was a song that lived and had lived. It was the
sort of song that said, "I've seen life, brother,"
and wagged its head at you.
The humming faded seamlessly off into merely breathing in a span
of time that seemed both infinite and definite at the same time.
I turned my head and looked out the window as I sat the coffee
cup down. Snow had begun to fall in flurries, drifting lazily to
the ground and melting as it hit the pavement outside. As the
people walked by, you could see each breath they took for just a
moment; and then it would fade away only to be replaced by
another breath in that same instant. The steam from their breaths
mingled in a way that people never seem to do, mixing in a
vaporous cloud as each person passed the other in a hurry to get
absolutely nowhere that would matter anyway.
My eyes fell on a young couple that wasn't moving quite as
quickly as the rest of the crowd. He seemed to be a young man in
his twenties with close-cropped sandy hair that moved with the
wind nevertheless. His companion seemed younger than he, but that
could have been an illusion produced by her height. She looked
like an elf with her green eyes and petite frame and was
obviously freezing in the cold winter air as the snowflakes hit
her face and melted upon impact. He spoke to her; and, in that
instant, she looked up at him with a look that listened rather
than responded. He drew her closer to him, under his coat, and
kissed the top of her head as she snuggled close to him and
wrapped her arm around his waist.
I looked away. I noticed that the floor was rather dusty, and
this thought dominated my mind for the next few moments.
The waitress came by and offered me some fresh coffee. I
accepted, and she poured. As she dipped the pot to pour the
coffee, it ran out in a stream and released a new torrent of
steam which almost - but not quite - reached the ceiling.
As she stopped pouring and pulled the pot away, a few drops
spilled on the table and just sat there.
I put my hands above the cup and caught the steam in my hands
just to feel the warmth before letting it drift toward the
ceiling.
I scanned the diner rather panoramically, soaking up the
atmosphere. Over in the corner, a young woman was dabbing a
french fry into some ketchup as the little boy with her took a
large bite out of his child-sized burger. She took the fry to her
lips and bit the end daintily before setting the fry down on her
plate. She reached across the table and tousled the boy's
hair lovingly, and he looked up at her with ketchup on his lip
and smiled. She took her napkin out of her lap and wiped his
mouth clean even as he was picking up his burger again.
It was at this time that I saw a familiar movement near the door.
Glancing in that direction, I noticed that it was the girl from
the side of the road. She looked at me just as I was looking at
her, and we shared that uncomfortable moment when you both
realize that you're staring.
I darted my eyes away and pondered my right shoe for a moment.
When I looked up, she was there right beside the table. I stood
up - perhaps a bit too quickly - and she hugged me, leaving
me confused as to what exactly I should do with my hands.
Ah, this was bliss, this moment. If I closed my eyes, I could
almost imagine myself to be that young couple that had just
walked by my window.
But I didn't close my eyes; and, as she drew away, I noticed
for the first time that she wasn't alone. No, she had with
her a young man not unlike the fellow who had just passed by me
(though perhaps a bit younger).
Even as introductions were made, I invited them to sit down in my
little corner booth. They both crowded in on the opposite side
with a certain familiarity that spoke of contentment and
commitment.
They spoke to me, and I responded without any conscious knowledge
(or even any real recollection even now) of the conversation.
Instead, I watched their every subtle move. She held his right
hand while he played with her silky hair with his left. Every
motion they made breathed love in a steamy vapor that hung just
over our heads and went no higher. Every time I looked in her
eyes, she sentenced me to death; and every time they glanced each
other, I died.
They ordered hot chocolate to drive away the winter's chill.
The waitress brought them two steaming dark blue mugs with
marshmallows bobbing in the chocolatey liquid each time she took
a step.
They spoke to me in between sips and hugs - I, bobbing my head
and thinking to myself in voiceovers.
After finishing their cocoa and speaking in tones that sounded
like farewells, they left me standing beside the little table and
watching them go out the doors and down the sidewalk.
When they were out of my sight, I realized that I was still
standing and immediately resumed my seat at the little booth.
I breathed out to expel some of the residual tension and left
myself empty.
I looked down at my shoes again and thought absolutely nothing.
When I looked up, it was to scan the diner once again. The old
men had begun to trickle away, and a younger crowd seeped in to
fill their spots. I thought of the numerous young women sitting
alone in the diner. I wondered if they liked their coffee and
whether they took it black or with sugar and cream. I wondered
what sort of music they liked, if they had any pets, if they
liked chocolate, and - most of all - if they were alone
just like me. I almost got up and spoke to one of them, sitting
over in the light in a little booth by the bar.
The waitress came by and asked me if I'd like some more
coffee. I moved my cup toward her in agreement, dragging it
through the drops spilt earlier. As she scurried off toward the
well-lighted kitchen, I watched the steam from my cup head toward
the ceiling and fade away.
42
Are you frightened?
Are you frightening?
Are you loving?
Are you loved?
Come.
Sit at the
Pneumatic Buffet.
Taste the enigma of
ten-thousand years.
There's a taste for everyone,
and we always leave the table clean.
I walked out of the cafe
and embraced the cold night,
taking it up as my chosen cross.
There is no escape from solitude.
There are only dreams
and the frustration of beauty.
Iron is the taste of fear,
and tears are the taste of broken glass.
Eyes have a light that comes to me in waves
of insanity.
How many times -
in how many faces -
have I felt the merest echo of the Other?
I have not found my melody.
I'm not even sure she exists.
I've only the merest shade
in my dreams
and in my failures.
For now, the night will be my lover;
and sometimes loneliness can be a bride.
44
I stayed out the rest of the night,
looking at the stars
and wondering how much of what I saw was absolutely nothing.
Remarkably,
the sun rose that morning
just like it had every morning before.
It made its way lazily across the sky
and finally faded to somewhere beyond the horizon.
And the next morning it came and went
only to repeat the process the very next day.
So life went on in an endless parade of rising and setting,
and some - but certainly not all - lived happily ever
after.
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