All I wanted was a front row seat in what feels like a war and looks nothing like it. I keep reciting the procedure and double and triple checking equipment, and in the mean seconds ticking by the pilot is sweating marbles trying to keep our helicopter away from flak and small arms fire and the occasional rocket, circling where I need to land once I jump off of the side. I'm sweating too fearful of what happens after I step out into thin air, but I know what happens. There's nothing to be afraid of.
Walking into my apartment after getting groceries the long fingered man with the reading glasses glances up and turns around and taps the only skin on his arm not flayed away where a watch was. Time is of the essence. I know. There is not much time to waste. I know, I know, I know. Where are you going? Out, don't follow me. You forgot your wallet. Thank you.
I suppose, a sort of writer's block for persons who don't get writer's block?
Consider this your gentle, two palmed, straight armed shove. You know what has to be done. Pull the trigger.
I worry sometimes that it won't make sense. I worry now if it's not good. If the entire pursuit has been a waste. Why poetry? What is locking up inside you? It's nothing. Absolutely nothing and you know it. Don't be afraid, you've just had your eyes closed for a few months. Listening to the air and the land and space and people eating each other alive and giving birth and dying and sleeping and breathing and talking and talking and it's not so bad if you'd only open your eyes standing on the ledge of the gunship. Make sense out of chaos. Or chaos out of chaos. Make sense of it later. Every thought lost to time is one less beacon, one less point of reference, one less story, one less epic, one less chapter, one less relationship you could have brought into this world from your travels. One less love. Do it for you. Do it because you can love you and that's where it all starts. Come clapping toward the bright pink smoke flare while the shells fly. I'll be back to pick you up sooner than you have time to think to ask "where did you go?"
///Sylvan Esso - "Hey Mami" higher resolution
Clean with alcohol only. Do not attempt to replace blown fuses. Do not remove access panels. Return to certified mechanic for regular maintenance. Made in the USA.
11/25/14
11/23/14
That Instant
it blossoms that you're too drunk to fish, too drunk to drive, and too drunk to masturbate, but just drunk enough to sleep like a new born.
11/20/14
Dear (_____)
Dear Electronics Websites,
Can we all just agree that a skin for a product that happens to have circuits and wires and batteries inside it is not an electronic product. Here's a revolutionary idea: when customers are sifting through your offerings just make a separate tab and call it "skins." The people looking for skins will know where to go and the people looking for low cost, practical, headphones won't blow their brains out scrolling through 400 different skins to put on the back of their phone case's phone case.
A skin is not an electronic device!
Can we all just agree that a skin for a product that happens to have circuits and wires and batteries inside it is not an electronic product. Here's a revolutionary idea: when customers are sifting through your offerings just make a separate tab and call it "skins." The people looking for skins will know where to go and the people looking for low cost, practical, headphones won't blow their brains out scrolling through 400 different skins to put on the back of their phone case's phone case.
A skin is not an electronic device!
11/15/14
Colonel Gentleman
Colonel Gentleman's list of things that belong in a flaming trashcan:
1: work gloves that I paid good money for that don't protect my hands from dick.
2: tear free shampoos.
3: Justin Beiber.
4: toeless socks.
5: erasable pens.
6: liquors tailored to people who do not like the taste of liquor.
7: people who do not like the taste of liquor and drink it anyway. You're ruining the market for everyone else.
8: light beers.
9: 36% of Major League Baseball's teams.
10: band aids with impossible packaging.
1: work gloves that I paid good money for that don't protect my hands from dick.
2: tear free shampoos.
3: Justin Beiber.
4: toeless socks.
5: erasable pens.
6: liquors tailored to people who do not like the taste of liquor.
7: people who do not like the taste of liquor and drink it anyway. You're ruining the market for everyone else.
8: light beers.
9: 36% of Major League Baseball's teams.
10: band aids with impossible packaging.
11/4/14
Breaking the Horse
Sometimes it feels as though I can do no right. What happened in my past lives to be cursed so? I lost a cat yesterday. I gave him everything he wanted. I gave him everything he needed and then some. It makes no sense. I can still feel him. I can still see bits of him in my vision. I can still smell him. His ears smelled like french toast sometimes. He was only about two years old. I have to remind myself that I didn't kill him. I wonder if I did perhaps by accident. I flushed my fish down the toilet a while back, but that was because I shouldn't have had them to begin with.
I thought I did pretty good with him. He was my chief officer on board my ship. The other guy was my first mate. The first mate has been promoted. I'm sure he didn't want to get his promotion that way. He keeps meowing constantly to call up the deceased. He doesn't understand that our chief officer is gone for good. I kind of don't understand it either. As soon as I touched him I knew he wasn't just sleeping. He was my cooking buddy. I'd meet him in the mess hall to talk about our course and how to squeeze a little more oomf out of the engines. He was my napping buddy too. My sleep in pal. He'd lay on my phone so I wouldn't have to hear it.
No, no, no, sweetie. Come back to me. I need you! My first mate needs you too. We had a good crew. Was the music too loud? Was the bass too heavy? Did I not keep the temperature high enough? I couldn't turn it up any higher. It made my nose bleed too much. What did I screw up? Who's going to wake me up in the morning now?
I thought about burning his body for a very long time. Give him up to the air and the stars. I'm giving him back to the city instead. It's where he came from. If I gave him to the stars, he wouldn't know what to do with himself. I am from there. He is not. He'll be home. I am glad our paths crossed. I do not know how to explain it to my first mate. If I spoke cat, I might be able to. I'm not sad. I am angry. Why didn't you tell me? Did you? Did I kill you? Involuntary manslaughter? Agent 001 Jack: K.I.A., Mr. Morton codename "Lauren": K.I.A., Chief Officer Torus: K.I.A., First Mate Boots "Hatswitch" Mustachio: T.B.D.
I am happy though. One of the last things I remember doing with him is letting him climb up my jean leg and hook his claws into my hoodie all the way up my back so he could get a good perch on my shoulder and ride around up there while I walked through the ship and pointed out the things he liked to sit on from the view of his colossus. We were a fabulous team. I thought we'd have more time to enjoy our voyage. He loved to sit in my lap while I wrote in my notebooks. He'd rub his face on the corners of the pages and make little wet nose prints on the backs of my hands and the paper.
Each week, each month, each year, I am trying to break the horse. I am trying to break myself and exercise control better than I did the year, the month, the week, before. Sometimes with success. Sometimes with failure. Some of the voices scream "somebody has to pay!!!" It is unreasonable. It is irrational. I want to cut you open so badly. I want to hook my hand into your mouth and press my fingertips underneath your tongue until the break through the skin behind your chin and rip as hard as I can and hear the sucking pop of your jaw breaking away from the rest of your skull and listen to you drown bleeding into your own esophagus. Somebody has to pay. I am trying to break that horse. I am trying not to hurt myself to show you what we want from you.
Happiness is fleeting. Pain endures. Pain is infectious as is happiness. I am not broken. I am tired of dealing with death. The horseman that rides with me. Our ghost army behind us. Having to continually modify not by choice, but necessity.
I know I have to use my words more. Not just more, but with greater frequency. I have to use art more to break the locks and the seizing to escape the killing fields. I have to pay more respect to the blast radius and recognize that it is not a game and if I take it too lightly, if I lull myself into believing it will sort itself out without careful and constant monitoring I will wake up too late and infection will spread far and wide defeating the entire purpose of closing the cycle of violence began a generation before my birth. I am trying to break myself. I am trying to limit myself. Meta-jail is real and I have to do my part too. You are there for a reason. You can manufacture happiness. The children are always present, do not listen to them, no matter what they say. While you've been ignoring it, the factory floor has been busy and now coming to that basement and seeing the stockpiles of things you only imagined existed my heart falls. Where the hell were you when the furnace fired again? Where the hell were you when the new blueprints were spread out and the flywheels started turning again? I tried. Try harder! This is not a game!
It is good that some mobility has been lost. There are those you cannot reach and it is good. It is important. Remember why you laugh, jackal. The freedoms you have were hard won, do not give them up easily. Do not give them up lazily. Take time. We have been patient and we will not shed it. A crew of two instead of three may not be so bad a thing as you imagine. The first mate will adjust and embrace his promotion, regardless of how it came about. Know that, do not say it, know it. You did not skin him. You do not wear him. He will be remembered. Bury the tools and keep an eye on us. I will. Somebody has to pay, but not today.
I took a long walk around the city. A very long walk. Control rage. You were born. Get over it. I was born on the twenty second of April in nineteen eighty five. Remember what you are doing. I was born into conflict. I was born into violence. I was born into love too. I was born onto a battlefield not of my own making and that is okay. That is alright. We learned, we grew, we got stronger, we learned how to kill and how to eat, how to feed ourselves, how to breath, how to hide, how to fight, how to see in the dark, how to trap, how to sleep, we learned and we grew. We learned our genealogy was a lost cause and our history before our time will never be mapped. We figured out the tree was a hangman's and the damage was already done well before we opened our eyes for the first time on Staten Island. We understood hunger and the sound of an empty stomach and the shiver. Do not forget the mission. Lay a road map for those that are coming after you are gone. Do not forget what it is you must fulfill. Even though your heart is kind of small you were built for something more. Embrace it. Learn the truth and love your life because you only get one shot at it.
Your shipmates will help you. Your inmates. Your internees. They will help you along the expedition through space and time. They are part of the fold, jackal. Use the words, not the weapons. The child will come and go. Supernature is simply part of the spectrum you were born with. They are not demons or angels or phantoms and errors. They are not only that, please stop crying sweetheart. You will die and you will take all of them with you and they will be gone for good too. That's okay. I don't know if Torus saw them too. I don't know if he felt them. I kissed him before I let him go. I rubbed his fur into my nostrils and ate some of his whiskers before I put him back in the trash where he came from. I hope you're happy you disparaged him saying he came from a dumpster. Pluto used to be a planet. We want to name a constellation after him.
I dislike my bad wiring so much. I know I cannot increase my strength, my power. I cannot be allowed to break down the electrified fences and razor wire atop. I cannot let it go. I cannot be allowed to make more money, it will turn into more combustion chambers, more cylinders, more lead, more trigger mechanisms, sights, and chemicals. More wires, dead man switches, boxes of nails and washers, nitrogen, ammonia, and springs. More casings and pellets and carpet knives. Bang on the left ear so it all falls out of the right ear. With greater knowledge comes greater responsibility and I am not sure I am to the task. We absolutely are. For the love of God, get the hell away from me.
Who massages your shoulders? Who plucks your eyelashes? Who sets your makeup? One gold tooth. Break that horse. Change those shoes. Wash those gloves. I need more power. No, you don't. I do! NO YOU DO NOT! Imagine the kingdom we could have. No. Do not lie to me. I am not lying.
I definitely wanted to become a musician. A composer. A librarian. To get lost in the stacks and get paid for it because alphabetical order never lies. Growing up, so many have lied to me. Washing dishes and playing the bubbles like a battlefield always put a smile on my face until standing on a milk crate on Brighton Avenue I heard them screaming at each other and I tried to wiggle my ears to remind them that I was standing there and they started to say he's listening and they took it upstairs, but I could still hear them. My nose is running again. No blood though, that's good. I haven't pissed blood in a while and that's good too. I know how it ends, I do. I am halfway home. Remind ourselves not to do anything stupid. Remind ourselves the visions are just that, visions only.
Time will fly and before we know it we'll be polishing my skull and looking at the healed fractures and running our fingertips over them like welds on an engine block trying to reverse engineer the forces and machines and hands that made them. Do you have a torque wrench? A shoeing hammer? An arc welder will do in a pinch. A continuous retrofitting. We were built for a war, but the war is over. It is not. We were built in war time and repurposed. Built not to feel. Built to not need to see. I got out. I got out. The horse must be broken. Distance must be kept. Do not lose heart. Finish the deal.
Enjoy the view from the edge of the arm of the Milky Way and do not curse Sol or Terra. Aboard the ship we are secure and secured. Take care of the equipment and don't stay long. Coexist. Someday you too will shut down, but understand there are many paths to that end and much to be explored before the channels go dead. Do not forget where you came from, do not be consumed by where you're going. I am not broken.
///Chairlift - "Guilty As Charged" ...footprints on the carpet....go on and punish me...
///El-P & Killer Mike - "Early"
I thought I did pretty good with him. He was my chief officer on board my ship. The other guy was my first mate. The first mate has been promoted. I'm sure he didn't want to get his promotion that way. He keeps meowing constantly to call up the deceased. He doesn't understand that our chief officer is gone for good. I kind of don't understand it either. As soon as I touched him I knew he wasn't just sleeping. He was my cooking buddy. I'd meet him in the mess hall to talk about our course and how to squeeze a little more oomf out of the engines. He was my napping buddy too. My sleep in pal. He'd lay on my phone so I wouldn't have to hear it.
No, no, no, sweetie. Come back to me. I need you! My first mate needs you too. We had a good crew. Was the music too loud? Was the bass too heavy? Did I not keep the temperature high enough? I couldn't turn it up any higher. It made my nose bleed too much. What did I screw up? Who's going to wake me up in the morning now?
I thought about burning his body for a very long time. Give him up to the air and the stars. I'm giving him back to the city instead. It's where he came from. If I gave him to the stars, he wouldn't know what to do with himself. I am from there. He is not. He'll be home. I am glad our paths crossed. I do not know how to explain it to my first mate. If I spoke cat, I might be able to. I'm not sad. I am angry. Why didn't you tell me? Did you? Did I kill you? Involuntary manslaughter? Agent 001 Jack: K.I.A., Mr. Morton codename "Lauren": K.I.A., Chief Officer Torus: K.I.A., First Mate Boots "Hatswitch" Mustachio: T.B.D.
I am happy though. One of the last things I remember doing with him is letting him climb up my jean leg and hook his claws into my hoodie all the way up my back so he could get a good perch on my shoulder and ride around up there while I walked through the ship and pointed out the things he liked to sit on from the view of his colossus. We were a fabulous team. I thought we'd have more time to enjoy our voyage. He loved to sit in my lap while I wrote in my notebooks. He'd rub his face on the corners of the pages and make little wet nose prints on the backs of my hands and the paper.
Each week, each month, each year, I am trying to break the horse. I am trying to break myself and exercise control better than I did the year, the month, the week, before. Sometimes with success. Sometimes with failure. Some of the voices scream "somebody has to pay!!!" It is unreasonable. It is irrational. I want to cut you open so badly. I want to hook my hand into your mouth and press my fingertips underneath your tongue until the break through the skin behind your chin and rip as hard as I can and hear the sucking pop of your jaw breaking away from the rest of your skull and listen to you drown bleeding into your own esophagus. Somebody has to pay. I am trying to break that horse. I am trying not to hurt myself to show you what we want from you.
Happiness is fleeting. Pain endures. Pain is infectious as is happiness. I am not broken. I am tired of dealing with death. The horseman that rides with me. Our ghost army behind us. Having to continually modify not by choice, but necessity.
I know I have to use my words more. Not just more, but with greater frequency. I have to use art more to break the locks and the seizing to escape the killing fields. I have to pay more respect to the blast radius and recognize that it is not a game and if I take it too lightly, if I lull myself into believing it will sort itself out without careful and constant monitoring I will wake up too late and infection will spread far and wide defeating the entire purpose of closing the cycle of violence began a generation before my birth. I am trying to break myself. I am trying to limit myself. Meta-jail is real and I have to do my part too. You are there for a reason. You can manufacture happiness. The children are always present, do not listen to them, no matter what they say. While you've been ignoring it, the factory floor has been busy and now coming to that basement and seeing the stockpiles of things you only imagined existed my heart falls. Where the hell were you when the furnace fired again? Where the hell were you when the new blueprints were spread out and the flywheels started turning again? I tried. Try harder! This is not a game!
It is good that some mobility has been lost. There are those you cannot reach and it is good. It is important. Remember why you laugh, jackal. The freedoms you have were hard won, do not give them up easily. Do not give them up lazily. Take time. We have been patient and we will not shed it. A crew of two instead of three may not be so bad a thing as you imagine. The first mate will adjust and embrace his promotion, regardless of how it came about. Know that, do not say it, know it. You did not skin him. You do not wear him. He will be remembered. Bury the tools and keep an eye on us. I will. Somebody has to pay, but not today.
I took a long walk around the city. A very long walk. Control rage. You were born. Get over it. I was born on the twenty second of April in nineteen eighty five. Remember what you are doing. I was born into conflict. I was born into violence. I was born into love too. I was born onto a battlefield not of my own making and that is okay. That is alright. We learned, we grew, we got stronger, we learned how to kill and how to eat, how to feed ourselves, how to breath, how to hide, how to fight, how to see in the dark, how to trap, how to sleep, we learned and we grew. We learned our genealogy was a lost cause and our history before our time will never be mapped. We figured out the tree was a hangman's and the damage was already done well before we opened our eyes for the first time on Staten Island. We understood hunger and the sound of an empty stomach and the shiver. Do not forget the mission. Lay a road map for those that are coming after you are gone. Do not forget what it is you must fulfill. Even though your heart is kind of small you were built for something more. Embrace it. Learn the truth and love your life because you only get one shot at it.
Your shipmates will help you. Your inmates. Your internees. They will help you along the expedition through space and time. They are part of the fold, jackal. Use the words, not the weapons. The child will come and go. Supernature is simply part of the spectrum you were born with. They are not demons or angels or phantoms and errors. They are not only that, please stop crying sweetheart. You will die and you will take all of them with you and they will be gone for good too. That's okay. I don't know if Torus saw them too. I don't know if he felt them. I kissed him before I let him go. I rubbed his fur into my nostrils and ate some of his whiskers before I put him back in the trash where he came from. I hope you're happy you disparaged him saying he came from a dumpster. Pluto used to be a planet. We want to name a constellation after him.
I dislike my bad wiring so much. I know I cannot increase my strength, my power. I cannot be allowed to break down the electrified fences and razor wire atop. I cannot let it go. I cannot be allowed to make more money, it will turn into more combustion chambers, more cylinders, more lead, more trigger mechanisms, sights, and chemicals. More wires, dead man switches, boxes of nails and washers, nitrogen, ammonia, and springs. More casings and pellets and carpet knives. Bang on the left ear so it all falls out of the right ear. With greater knowledge comes greater responsibility and I am not sure I am to the task. We absolutely are. For the love of God, get the hell away from me.
Who massages your shoulders? Who plucks your eyelashes? Who sets your makeup? One gold tooth. Break that horse. Change those shoes. Wash those gloves. I need more power. No, you don't. I do! NO YOU DO NOT! Imagine the kingdom we could have. No. Do not lie to me. I am not lying.
I definitely wanted to become a musician. A composer. A librarian. To get lost in the stacks and get paid for it because alphabetical order never lies. Growing up, so many have lied to me. Washing dishes and playing the bubbles like a battlefield always put a smile on my face until standing on a milk crate on Brighton Avenue I heard them screaming at each other and I tried to wiggle my ears to remind them that I was standing there and they started to say he's listening and they took it upstairs, but I could still hear them. My nose is running again. No blood though, that's good. I haven't pissed blood in a while and that's good too. I know how it ends, I do. I am halfway home. Remind ourselves not to do anything stupid. Remind ourselves the visions are just that, visions only.
Time will fly and before we know it we'll be polishing my skull and looking at the healed fractures and running our fingertips over them like welds on an engine block trying to reverse engineer the forces and machines and hands that made them. Do you have a torque wrench? A shoeing hammer? An arc welder will do in a pinch. A continuous retrofitting. We were built for a war, but the war is over. It is not. We were built in war time and repurposed. Built not to feel. Built to not need to see. I got out. I got out. The horse must be broken. Distance must be kept. Do not lose heart. Finish the deal.
Enjoy the view from the edge of the arm of the Milky Way and do not curse Sol or Terra. Aboard the ship we are secure and secured. Take care of the equipment and don't stay long. Coexist. Someday you too will shut down, but understand there are many paths to that end and much to be explored before the channels go dead. Do not forget where you came from, do not be consumed by where you're going. I am not broken.
///Chairlift - "Guilty As Charged" ...footprints on the carpet....go on and punish me...
///El-P & Killer Mike - "Early"
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