You Forgot It In People

It's an experience I must have somehow forgotten, for how can you long for a feeling without ever having experienced it?

All I want is for someone to listen to Sleater-Kinney with me. To lie on the floor, the two of us in each other's presence with the music playing between us. Each of us experiencing something new in each song; lyrics we hadn't really paid attention to or riffs we'd never taken the time to notice before.

And quite possibly, it may be dark. The lights could be dim, or extinguished entirely-- or there could be sun spilling in through the window, light overflowing frame's confine and skin illuminated in washes of subtle golden tones. Notes mixing with eddying particles of dust in the air; vibrations of some new life form felt through the intertwining of fibers and fingers in the carpet.

Complete parallel comfort in the same tiny space. Mutual appreciation for the same things; appreciation heightened by presence and coupling. A simplistic marriage of spent time.

No registration of temperature or of knots in the back. No such trivialities as seconds. The basal kind of joy we used to experience as kids-- when our imagination and its fantasies were sufficient companionship.

There is a bit of that wonder gone from this world. We miss it when we remember, and we remember all the same.

Even as I write I forget these feelings. Perhaps we lost these bits of ourselves when we began putting them to paper-- and now, look: no longer is there any paper. Like that, we realize how our lives have slipped by. Simple things like daydreaming are forgotten; wonderment is forgotten, and yet we keep on writing.

We keep on pushing pencils. Then we graduate to pens, and change from standard print to cursive.

Next come the mechanical pencils, and we lose standard print and cursive both: opting first for a sloppy-yet-individualistic mixture of the two, and then the complete elimination of said.

Now it's keys and fonts, and none of the expressiveness of shape and movement. The letters all have their space, not one runs into the other.

And we've lost track of ourselves; we've begun to lose track of our lives. On occasion--whether it be by accident or by some small will of our former selves-- we look back, telling ourselves it's to gauge just how far we've come, but all the while knowing deep-down that we miss something.

Before too long, we've forgotten what we miss. We miss what we've forgotten.

And every day with the forward step. Every day with the riff, the beat, the tempo: measure by measure, til the song has ended. With no appreciation for the greater entity, the selfless giving and combination of all these parts which lose their importance to something larger.

And we have to hit the back button, start the track over again, because we realize-- suddenly-- that we have no idea what just happened. In all our efforts to know by heart the lines and notes and rhythms and tempos with which we've become all too familiar, we have lost all meaning in the greater song.

And we have to hit the back button, start the track over again...
And we have to hit the back button, start the track
... ... ... ... hit the back button, start the track
(because we realize)
And we have to hit the back button, start
(... have no idea what just...)


Hit the back button: start the track
... over again.

Ghosts

it's the ghosts
again.

they haunt and they wail
and they've come back
again

to traipse around in yesterday's sheets
of white death-weave
again.

they lurk in shadows which should not exist;
vacant hallways echo
with ache and lament.

corridors stretch and grow longer,
they are colder, now--
they are narrower.
light no longer holds any value;
taistes of dust and tyme-wave cause
a ruckus in the soul,

vibrating clanking cantankerous racket;

the heart lub-flubs: its palpitations
no longer of any consequence.
futile, futile fuck of a thing
you are, you are,
Mine Love.

phantom echoes--
neuron-fire flurries--
and light-show pictures of faded sepia
rain down in havoc-spells of fury.

bleak pall-shadows taking over:
and mem'ry comes, a-rushing
in cold soulless gusts
to tear at faded harlequin-print;
to tear at baseboard, to tear at plaster;
et mens, et corpus, et cor.

knock-knock on the door.
let them in? raise the dead?
it's the ghosts--
the ghosts are here
to frequent their haunt
(to take me back)
again.

Warning Sign

"Warning Sign"

She had decided to stay for a night in a hotel, as a "self-esteem exercise." Outside the hotel room, some distance away: images of bloody bathtubs and death from intoxication, from overdose, from sorrow.

Pages pulled up on the glowing screen-- excerpts from Wikipedia, regarding bipolar disorder. Perhaps. It is a possibility, though labels in and of themselves are no solution.

Inside his head: doubts thrown in the garbage bin (after they'd first been dug up). He'd thought he was over this. He had thought he already knew. And for a brief moment, his assuredness had wavered.

He had regained it now. His dignity, too-- though he shouldn't have fallen for the same old trick, it was no longer a threat to his dignity. Dignity did not matter. The only thing which mattered was steadfastness.

He would not play into its hands. He would not play the disease's game. He was done; the game was childish, and he was sick of it, he'd had it; no more fucking around.

This was serious business.

Some distance away, in a hotel room: clouded thoughts, sour breath, pickled grey matter, phantoms that would not go away. Ghosts which still would not forsake their haunt.

A child huddling, sleeping, crying: alone.

Forty-seven years; and still-- in so many ways, though fewer and fewer with each hotel, each check-in-- still a child, abandoned by her father.

The disease had taken him as well.

With the Space of the Sky Inside

I am cold. I wanna be warm.

I miss summer nights when I feel like this and I can just go and sit outside-- and it's warm, and there's lots of air and wind and silence, and it feels like there exists enough space for all of the feelings and thoughts. They have the space to lose themselves in.

I can feel connected with something because I'm alive in the light of time shining from the stars, watching hundreds of millions of years of history and living in this moment. These feelings can stretch themselves out, twining round and round the strands of time flowing from stars which may no longer exist. They have their place in the history of things. There's more space to dream.

One or two in the morning, when everything and everyone else is in another world.

Mmmm, boy does that feel good-- those thoughts.

I want people to connect with, too-- people who have those same thoughts. People who have that depth and space and wonder of the warm night sky inside them. Without the existence of waking people to clutter it up.

People who just have that big black star-studded silence inside their hearts and heads-- that darkness of the soul that is so absorbing and otherworldly, like the openness in the eternal hour between one and two in the morning.

Perhaps I feel better a bit now, like I've got a sky to empty into; space to fill. Thank you.

Still-- the weird sadness, but somehow less.

As Yet Untitled

I'd ask if someone might enlighten me and give me reason and impetus to write, but I have realized that writing must be soulful and spring forth from regions unknown.

Just because it must come from the self does not mean that it must be waited for-- one can certainly search for the source-- but it can not come from outside the self.

Taking inspiration from the surrounding world is merely a mutation of the self; to pontificate on the glories of nature is to envelop one's surroundings with one's entire being, whilst observing from a more removed (yet altogether unified) set of personal beliefs.

What will come forth? What have I inside that does not represent itself superficially?

Perhaps I could talk about my most recent change of heart regarding corporate entities and salesmen. At work, I am required to sell; I have become a salesman. The most cynical part of myself would hate this, because salesmen are liars, manipulators, and pawns of a greater evil entity.

But after working for as many months, I've come to realize salesmanship is about communication. No doubt, there are salesmen out there who are trying-- at this very moment-- to sell people on some completely unnecessary luxury. No doubt there exist salesmen who truly have scumbag hearts-- who cheat, con and manipulate poor pigeons out of their money for some service or product which promises Midas' golden touch without allegorical morals.

But when it comes to my job, I simply inform. I am not heartless. I inform customers that there exist programs which may better be specified to their desires or needs. I use combinations of audio and visual stimuli to deliver information, and I try to present customers with as little extraneous information as possible. For those who give me the time to speak, for those who are in no rush to race off to some other location or event, I outline the basics of a particular program which I believe-- based on a customer's history with our company-- might be beneficial to him or her.

It is an art, this ability to communicate and delight. Six months back I would have been turned off slightly-- if not outright disgusted-- by these things I say and believe now. But now knowing what it's like to hold and maintain a job, what it's like to perform as your boss or manager expects whilst still retaining your own beliefs and your sense of self-- having experienced all this, I now have a greater appreciation both for myself and for the working proletariat. It is so fulfilling to learn, to change your actions whilst keeping your beliefs and intentions the same.

Will I ever go to formal school? Yes, I will. When? I do not know. Is it even necessary? In my opinion, yes. It is perhaps more difficult than holding a paying job; when enrolled in school, one must change his or her actions in order to please teachers, professors and so-called experienced professionals. Some even change their sense of self, and this can be quite deteriorating, degrading and upsetting-- and unnecessary. The true key to succeeding in schooling (and in this greater world) is to use your abilities in creative ways which fit the man-made laws of society (and the natural laws of reality).

For me, I think, a taste of the working world was and still is appropriate and necessary to help me learn all this. Now that I have seen some of what you wise men call the Greater Truth, I can understand better the reasons for and the reasons behind your demands, your rules, your systems and your structure.

More and more every day, I feel confident in myself and in my ability to work my way through school. After twelve years of mutation, self-degradation, accomplishment and frustration in the schooling world, I feel it was necessary to take a break from that particular system and put my skills to the challenge inside another well-oiled machine. I think I now better understand the workings of various interrelated systems, and I think I am better prepared to commit myself to the clockwork of higher education.

Now, after all, I have the tools and the know-how to aid my mechanical knowledge. I am oiled up, and ready to run.

A (Short) Epic-Poem Variation on Beowulf

Only one amongst God’s chosen
chose, himself, to heed the call
of battle and of righteousness,
to do his duty to his people, free them
of the monster’s wrath,
and return the blackened, accurséd land
to its once-proud state
of golden status, of white-stained virtue;
as God’s right Hand,
he took with him two handfuls’ counting—
of his best and bravest, strongest men—
and made his leave, heading South
with all intent for a final slewing—
for Bad blood shed in the name of God—
in the blackened pits of the monster’s den.

From the tar-pits and blood-stained caverns
emerged our Hero’s fright’ning foe:
a Hellhound sick with rage and sin,
made mad by greed for human flesh—
its life a constant stream of pain, of angst
and anguish everlasting, and—as such—
was Heaven-bent, and ever-questing
God’s forgiveness, He who murdered
a thousand men.

Hell let loose its wildest furies,
raging about and through the fiend,
and our brave warrior, with his men,
charged the barbed, malevolent beast.
Serrated jaws and wide-swept maw
gorged upon the frightened men,

and our lone Hero, seasoned warrior—
with sword in hand and heart hell-bent—
collided with the spinéd monster.

Sinews strained, blades rankled,
wrangled and flashed in the noon-day sun,
cold with greed and deep-running sin,
God’s hate for the hellhound-kin
who drove our Hero’s men to madness,
to untimely death and despairing demise.
With no hope left but that of God—
abandoned by his men and brethren—
the warrior struck his final blow,
the strength of our Almighty
behind him: flowing through, about
and inside him. In two swift strokes
its life was spent, accurséd hell-head
cleanly hewn from body condemned,
from soul long-gone from absolution;
from days of repent.

The monster went
to fiery flayme. The land was wracked with shudders and quakes,
and our lone warrior—strong and brave,
proud and true and clutching his stave,
shining o'er lands God-graced, newly-lit by His bright sun—
banished the hell-hound to its grave,
and with its hell-tail ‘twixt its legs,
so it went, and was no more; forever-gone
from Heaven’s door, no more to encroach
upon the moor.

And as to our warrior—King of knaves—
so too was his own self bereaved
of all carnal desire and pain;
spent was his life, soul soon free
from worries banal and inane;
to the Kingdom of God
he would ascend.

And though his fingers felt the sting of Winter,
his Heart did not—and was content.
Hues and mem’ries of cold still lingered;
bodies lay broken, weapons bent.
Amongst his Loyal arose such din—
of sorrow fresh, for life so spent—
for their one true King, the One
True martyr whose heroic death
was embodied in full, in ev’ry wail
of grievous pain, of woe o’erwhelming;
caustic lament.