Archive for November, 2012
Parlaying the Intransigent Tar of my Editor
All the leafs, all of the websites, the tweets, hell,
Facebook posts, commanding, directing, distracting,
but making writing the compelling requirement, and Buk,
my friend, he tells me that if I’m not spitting it out, don’t do it,
but with respect, fuck him, and fuck my editor who sits,
who shits all over my shoulder and tells me I suck.
The directions tell me not to listen to the editor.
.
As if I Have a Right to Transform
I want to make people bounce up and down.
Who am I to seek such delight? The light gray
cements laugh at me. I told a joke and it didn’t
fly well, so I feel rather sheepish in front of the punks
and the 90%-tattoo-adorned hippy freak, but I feel
justified somehow in my attempt to brighten this
sullen day, as if I have a right to transform people’s
lives, as if I didn’t make up this landfill overwhelming
my brain with a desire to melt into dirty floor tiles,
sticking to the edges, slithering into that sewer
which keeps begging me to write a story that might
transform people’s lives, but after all, none of the
chuckleheads go to the sewer for illumination. There is
a man in suit and tie even though very few of us work
this day, as though it were not long after the apocalypse,
and we are stupid monkeys, and the gods jerk at our strings,
bellowing all the way in triumphant laughter at all of the
dead who never had a chance to transform much less
get loose from the monkey chains. And the silly bitty lady
J-walks, jiggling her tiny bag of popcorn, feeling delicious.
.
Most Days Should be Thanksgiving, Designed for Gratitude
Lessons, strangling the deathly stillness of sobriety,
as we are forced to write our lists, and why the fuck
does it require ten? Because otherwise,
we’d stop at two, and the first is always sobriety.
I’m clean. My breathing does not gurgle in large pools
of muddy water, and my family, and the love, and
this is because vodka was never a match for love,
but it sure beat the pulpy slime out of love for long periods,
as the brain’s diseased mind circled in several strands,
like perverted green sharks, ripping pieces of compulsion,
drilling the hiding games, the dark gardens of shame
covered with ill seaweed craving an unconsciousness.
I can read! I can write! Look at me; I can see,
and today’s mind seeks some sort of warmth or
brightness which seems to bury the mildew of pebbles
rolling from dreary nights spent waiting to die, and though
not one of us knows god, we’re all glad we know
god again, that he holds us in large hands, but mostly,
our gratitude comes loudly knocking every single morning,
caressing those massive gaps in life when we know who we are,
where we are and what we are. We do. We know.
.
Slate’s Never Right
Tonight, after being slugged in the stomach,
not the solar plexus (slugged a grand word,
especially when you’re in third grade, which of course,
I am no longer, only wishing to be so innocent),
in the stomach all day, well, for many large parts
of the day, when the slate of my mind is erased
while remaining poisoned, so do you know how a blank
slate feels when filled with poison, when the stomach
is filled with air that will never escape, sitting there
providing fuel for those poisons? The poisons ride in
my car tonight, swimming in and out of the beautiful
gloss and slick white surface of the blank slate
of a ruined mind, but I made it as if I were rowing
the last survivor’s boat and I sit here in sweats,
watching the poison creeping around waiting (the
poison) to strike harder tomorrow when my mind
feels fullness and goodness that is too foreign for her.
.
Today, Who Can I Blame?
I want to unclench my fists,
let go of this tract, this uninhabited
basement, be rid of this grizzly who crawls
through my hair, pulls my eyes to flash
pain points, slams my fingers when I try
to open doors to brightening projects,
slaps me with the back of claws as I seek
glimpses of murky, slickly gray happiness,
throws me down stairs with darkening curves
until I walk blindly in halls, hearing the screams,
You fool, you failure. Who allows you to live
and pretend you make a difference, pretend
you live with purpose? You fool, don’t you see
Momma Grizzly? She tells you to give up, to crawl
out the tiny bathroom window while sliding
on the oiled tiles, pale blue and flu white,
fall into the final resting hell where you belong,
and do you listen? No, you flail about as if
there is some value to the gray matter
in your skull, as if some day you might
feel good, feel fresh, feel worthy.
Son, son, son, stick your fingers
in the dark sockets, tighten
the Baggie over your face.
.
Freddy’s a Mess – The Paragraphs That Knocked Me Dead
{What follows is the passage that killed my Wrimo spirit on day 3. It was too directionless, purposeless for a novel, so I am back to writing other stuff, but I thought I’d share this meandering passage…}
The morning marches in uneven increments. We think we understand how time progresses as we work, whether we’re pulling weeds or dinking and dunking with numbers. We think that work gives us some regularity to our experience of time, but in reality, we imprison ourselves in boxes of ticks as if we’re stomping our feet, marching to the beat of a drummer who will never die, who thuds with the pulp of an inflated heart, and we feel hairs changing to gray, feeling at the same time perhaps an opportunity to defer the gray.
The carpets are well worn and on some days, Freddy sees 100-mile-an-hour tape all over various loose threading portions of the carpet, but there aren’t any portions like that. Freddy seems to transport himself to a spot in the future when the carpet has never been replaced but the workers have been there all along. We wear through these paths in the carpet as we go to the restroom or often, back and forth between the break room. In the break room, every time he’s there, Freddy reflects on all of the large drinking vessels that get filled with purpose and wonders why anyone with these jugs would ever need to go back multiple times per day. We’re all good like our websites say. We spend our days drinking gallons and gallons of water. Coffee and water get tossed all over the rug, usually after the jugs have been filled, and the rug has amazing resiliency as the liquids seem to evaporate as you watch, before you could ever grab a roll of paper towel. But all of these liquids through all of these years must rob the carpet of beauty. There’s no way to think of it otherwise. Then there are those times when all of the people in the cubicle farm, gradually filled with an increasing despair, a destitute that grows like mold, surely billions of spores of that stuff growing through the carpet fibers. Those cubicle farm people need a break from the bleating of the insanity, from the pounding of the ping of the fluorescent lights, keyboards with varying degrees of greasy finger stains and oceans of crumbs between the keys making all of the sounds fuzzy with the clickishness, and they leave the cubicle suite and flow into the giant building hallways, normally riding the elevator known to be something like an Read the rest of this entry »
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