Proclivities

Why do I enjoy the things that I do?  It cannot all be chance.  The chance of it all being chance is just silly.  Laughing to myself while I compose the thought from hundreds of shards, I understand a little something.  Those somethings follow:

I wouldn't be as into giant robots as I am should I not have seen a manual when I was younger.  I wouldn't be as into mythology and comic books had I not seen so many when I was younger.  I would not be in to so many technical diagrams had I not been presented them when I was younger and I'm not talking about diagrams of machines as much as human bodies.

I probably could have avoided getting beaten as often as I did if I didn't dive into diagrams of the naked form as were provided.  Which is kind of hilarious because I wouldn't be as good as I am at seeing them for the bones they are now if I hadn't seen them when I was a small fry.

I cannot help laughing, explaining it now.  "Why do these things occupy so much of your head's space?"  I don't know.  I'm sure parts of it are generated within myself.  Absolutely.  Why can I not look at someones face and see the wires beneath it?  The bones and structure and frame it in a comic books frame or a films sketch board?  How come I cannot turn that off?

For the same reason that I cannot approach someone without thinking about and forecasting how to defend myself.  "You have to learn how to fight!"

These are questions only your parent can answer.

I've been refused answers.

Wiping saliva from my computer screen, it is true.  That is part of why I laugh hysterically.

The greatest complement, I've heard, is emulation.  Copying.  That is also what I've been taught.  How do you learn?  By emulating.  How do you create?  Learn the rules and then you can make whatever you want to.  OR.  You can feel an audience and play to a crowd.  OR.  You can do what appears to be reasonable and go from there as long as no one dies in the gears of your operation.  As long as no one gets hurt.  There are many rules.

I am sad.   I am thorough.  I am skattered.  I am some original parts and some parts straight from the manufacturer.  I am not thrilled.

The manufacturer insisted.  I argued.  The manufacturer insisted.

I do wonder, if he had it to do over again, would he.  That question will never be answered.

So I draw and I build and I create and I war and sometimes I scuffle and I hold grudges and I love forever and I hate and I draw, I build, I design, and model, and color, and I never quite know exactly why.  I don't know if I'm the best version of myself or if I will never know the answer that I expect to go hand in hand with that question.

Every few days out of a month it enrages me.

I cannot force him to speak on his behalf, as he many times made me do.  I wish that on no one.  By that rule, I do not wish that on him.  The best I can do is detective work and let him know, unless he is willing to open up the book of death, he has no place in my world.

I wasn't asking for my abusive father for an apology.  All I was asking for was accountability, being old enough to talk to him person to person.

I got stonewalled.  And that's that.

Nothing more to do except continue to build my own life, evolve one baby step at a time, and continue to try my damnedest to forget about him and hope he dies sooner than later.  For now that's the best we can do.





///Mos Def - "Umi Says"

Most definitely.

Veggie Tacos

The thought of eating vegetable filled tacos is terrible at first.  Once you really start to think about what you like the most about tacos, it becomes more clear that what you like the most about tacos is not the meat.  What you like the most is the kaleidoscope of tastes and the sooner you can wean your train of thought off of the "meat must be incorporated into each of the three meals of the day" you can get over it pretty quickly.

I mean, you used to think a day's good eatin' had to have three meals in it for the longest time and how guilty and terrible did you feel about yourself before you finally understood that myth was busted like a car with no tires and four wheels?

Simple changes will save you from cardiac arrest down the road.  Bust a few more myths and all you'll have to do is quit smoking (eventually).




///Useless Information 

Thursday (explication of what came to be "I'll Come See You" the poem)

I don't know how you read it, but this is how I meant it.

Knock the slag off, with air piston jacked hammers.

When I kicked this off, the intent was to put something down in writing that was blunt force enough to make me need to go further to explain it because I know I do paint myself into corners, at least I feel that I do, to add clarity to what I say.  From that spark, the spark of shedding light, everything else developed.

Sitting on a crate opposite you
sitting on another,
printed in yellow block stencil
underneath, 98 mm high explosive x 75.

From that spark I imagined our meeting.  What I said before about knocking off slag with jack hammers was a reference to work.  From that reference, I immediately jumped into the warzone of language and how often times that is how I view my relationship with the world outside of me.  It really is a, put it on whatever scale you want to, some kind of war and this blog is a bit of a foxhole and we are literally sitting on our mental ammunition boxes. 

Underneath my ass 150 mm
aye pee
times 30.  My feet dangling like our cigarette's
smoke mingling on a windless afternoon.

This verse is kind of a wink and a nod because I do avoid actually smoking as much as possible, but I vape pretty hard.  The main thing about it though is that I am prone to large gauge action while most people are happy to work with suppressing fire.  My actions are much more leaned toward "kill them all in one sweep of gun barrel barking."  I can go accurate, but it is much more fun to swamp them in flames the way I have been.  Hence, the large gauge ammo underneath my bum and the smaller gauge, but still deadly, ammunition box underneath the interpolated.

The front is 220 miles out
East as the crow flies.
We will have to refuel
over the mediterranean
and I am looking forward to seeing
how you do it.

This is where we bring in the mechs and how the mechs will get to the front lines, where the action is happening and a short reference to how we wage ware once we get there.  This is a reference to the fact that what is about to happen is not new to either of us.  We know exactly where it is and what needs to be done to get there.  And also speaks to the fact that we have no problem with how the mission succeeds as long as it succeeds.

Our conversation has already broken down
into objectives and way points with a little
bet mixed in to the after action report.

This verse simply speakes to the fact that we've been there before.  Our conversation does not need to be enumerated here, only indicated, hinted at, ellipsed.   We've done it so many times that the only thing that needs to be done is counting up how many people, targets, installations, were destroyed by the time we succeeded.

It is unfair
to where we land and to whom we mount against,
because they are not in on the game.

Again, this verse is a reference to the previous verse, assuming we both got back home after the operation safe and sound 

Us both waiting for the KA-CHUNK
of couplings leaving us in free fall
to where our bombardier's decided
we could do our best
against the populace.

This verse is a credit to the people who get us to the target zone and an acknowledgement that we do not neccessarily know who exactly it is we are going up against inside of our mechs, however.  However we have full faith that they, the pilots and/or controllers of our evening will not drop us into a situation that our equipment and skills directly related to our equipment cannot handle well, if not outright destroy them.

A little cheers of coffee.
A little double check of flight suits.
Is the mic where it needs to be?
Trial fit the helmet again
after a quadruple check;
be sure the reticle is in line.
Double check my nail polish
before the glove comes on.
Smash shoulders and opposing tattoos,
before the top of the flight suit
is zipped on.

This is an inside joke to a close friend who helped me tattoo myself.    It is part inside joke and part coffee joke.  "the best way to start your day" when you are going over your manifest for the day.  You know whatever it is that is required of your skills will take all of your skills and you have to be sure when the time comes to pull the trigger, that trigger cannot fail, take practice shots.

Finish the coffee, with pills in our mouths.
They will learn what we live for,
they will learn what is loud.

They will learn that you do need coffee and that you do live for challenges and that you do know what horrible drugs are and that you are not about it.

Our flights will be long.  I'll sleep inside the mech
along the way.  I don't know what happens to you
while we wait out the sandbox for play.
The thup thup thup thup thup thup
I can hear, because I never turn off
the audio input once I am strapped in.

We both understand how to get to the battlefield.  I don't understand how you are so calm.  I feel like you've been here before and I have not.

For me, it is a very long long long grin
to watch you work.  Guilty.

You know I have not been there before but youare looking forward to my struggling.

Watching, zone cleared against spear chuckers
who happened to have come into
a fushionable pile
and needed reckoning before
something terrible happened,
you break out a "grenade"
two tons strong and willing to-\
-/Christ, where is the pin?

A mixture of edge of tommorrow and starship troopers the book.  In Starship Troopers the book they had miniature nukes.  Miniature nukes could clear an entire area as long as they got clear. In edge of tomorrow the whole deal was differremt.  

Mech against mech.  Dust to dust.
Die another day.
Why can you not understand I do
feel the same?

This is myself, dropped onto this planet trying to stop you and yrtying to fighht you hardcore because what I would like to do is save everyone but I cannot.  What I would also like to do is kill everyone but I can also cannot.  I'm good with figthing you though.  I am good with where you RE COMING FROM.

Fire the shell in my mechanized palm
to fire it just that strong
and knock it four miles out
to change the time of day from moonlit to
high noon in a fire ball that could eat city blocks,
but she's in the air.  Fair.  But "what the f@#$?"

Apologies, but I turned the palm and the gun built in to accelerate  it against the what?  The elbow cannon that went off and blew the palm muzzle off to an odd degree shot it off toward the dark horrizon and it lit up like noon day.

Overkill.........  underneath your left foot,
underneath your left pedal inside your cockpit and
underneath you left foot outside your cockpit
you are grinding human flesh into a paste.  And now is
the fucking time.
Do you remember being small?  I do.
You don't get conscripted by chance.

Hearing him over the comm, realizing that the action he just did with the arm of his mech just required him to smush some people with the foot of his mech....

You find detonators.  You stumble upon detonators.
Land mines   Mines.  I've never met a land mine like you.

Me on the ground amongst the  flattened human beings trying to offer encouragement to my friend (the other pilot) while shaking my head at the damage he did without thinking about the power at his fingertips.

I will know how to move forward
regardless ,after you.
Everyone talks big.  Yack, yack, yak yak yak, waaaan.

Him trying to make another move and myself watching, back in my own mech while our communicators crackle and guns go boom.

Cruiser.  Angry.  There was someone else here.  I will find them, sonavubitch.  Fail.  My fault.    Reset.

Reset.

Reset.

Reset.

Me trying to wipe my memory and undo the entire operation in my head.  Each reset a muzzle flash.

Clutch in.  Match revs. Time to the light.  Gas pedal.  Clutch out.
Release brake.
Gas pedal down.

Slowly.

Burnout.

Me, over the comm link trying to coach him and failing, instead focusing on what I can do.  The work.

Take It Light and Hungry Muffins

I had this thought last night before work. I was foot loosing through some drafts of head poems that were approaching paper semi-permanence and what I was thinking about was a way to make the words more active. One of the problems with poetry is that it lends itself to passive construction, which is not always a bad thing as a starting point, but is a bad thing in the final deliverable. Poetry saddled up high and hard with passive constructions and ideas and sentences and fragments becomes burdensome pretty quickly.

The longer the poem the more noticeable the passive effect becomes and it's frustrating to me. For me it's a major obstacle most of the time. Taking a point of view out of a poem, making it neuter, or making it accessible and multiplicable, I guess open ended comes to mind, can also very quickly take so much focus out of it that it becomes a lot like staring at those damnable 3D art calendars that are supposed to be ships on the canals of Venice if you stare through them hard enough for an hour or two and that's not always what I want to create. Passivity leaves "so what"s dangling in the air afterward. Forgetability is probably the greatest symptom that tells you something bore too many passive structures to mean what it wanted to mean, whether by accident or on purpose. Which made me think some more as I tongued the words over and over to get a better angle.

What I struck on, and it's not new, is the idea that it's easy to write about being hungry, or being depraved, or being happy. The thing that adds in some separation between the people that can do that and the people that can write about hunger, the people that can write about depravity, and the people that can construct happiness is the conversion, successful conversion, of passive to active without losing parallels and loops and flurries of movement in meaning and senses that make words vibrate and condense into what could be considered a poem. Personally my definition of poetry is pretty wide. My professors never took too much of a shine to it, but whatever. They had Ph.Ds to work on or something. Skin tight jeans to squeeze into. Hair to gel. And tattoos to reveal corners of to beg questions from star eyed lyric junkie chicks. I assume. I'm pretty sure one was too busy to help me pass his class because he was way too busy cramming elements of his thesis into our heads to get raw useful material out of us that he could reincorporate later. Also too busy sucking his own cock. Which is beside the point.

I want to write not about being hungry, or being a muffin, or being asleep, but what I want to capture the verb state of hunger, the verbness of the muffin, the sensation of the sleeping and sometimes in the building it's so easy to slip off on passive bubbles and think I've accomplished something when in reality it was forgettable to everyone who wasn't there to see the furious action, the sparks, the welding, the rivet guns, and the workers high in the sky putting it all together and wrecking ballin' it back down and throwing it up again higher and higher and lower and lower.

I guess what I'm trying to say is I need to remember not to beat myself up over the work I love to do. At least not too hard. It is, afterall, my chosen line of work. The rest is just to make sure I have enough to keep on going until it's all done and all over. And that's what counts. So I say right now. From the top of a cresting wave of anti-comedown. From the edges of comfortable space.

Space has been treating me alright. I'm probably about to leave the inner system at some point. The view has been great. Miss the steady contact, but quite frankly it was unsustainable without help and on top of that it was as many parts discomfort as comfort. I don't know if all or nothing is reasonable, but it is a way. And for a plains walking spaceman it's the only way I've come to know for sure that let's me go as I mean to run on. So I take it. Light and sound. I don't really know if I'm gonna try to land again. Probably not. Gravity is for chumps.

On a totally unrelated note: I just realized that if I turn my chapstick all the way down there is virtually no way for it to get screwed up into the cap as it rubs against the sides of my pockets. Why did it take me damn near ten years of using chapsticks to figure that out!? Talk about essential information no one told me EVER. I mean, I'm sometimes not the fastest car on the track, but am I the last person in my peer group to figure this out? I suspect, quite possibly, yes.


///The Orb - "Spanish Castles in Space" After you come home from the longest day of work ever and lock your front door, put this on loud enough to hear it clearly no matter what you're doing. In the time it takes you to take your shoes off, take off your clothes, crack a beer, roll a joint, put on your homey clothes, and start to think about dinner and actually start to breath easy this song will sop it's way right into your brain and you won't even have realized it's whispering in your ear and all the bottom half of your brain can feel is the ocean lapping at your brain stem and your spine unwinding and you haven't done a damn thing to force the issue. It's just there. Actively soothing you.