For One Day Michael is a Lonely Meme

Lonely on a Tuesday, and all my metaphors are like similies. I find myself looking for new ways to spell my name, as though the words in themselves have meaning and will bring about some kind of change somewhere. Names are unique only in their definitions. To yourself, to family and loved ones, names are something wholly unique and more inextricably bound to emotion than the rest of the dictionary. On par with entries like rape and Heaven. But to others, to those who do not know you, they are like the names of colors, about which they know nothing, in whose beauty they may never invest themselves.

Bukowski Walkthrough

Beginnings are clean, even when it's stink or hate. You laugh when smoke is blown
in your face. Inside you know a clear path has been cut through the socks and books
and condoms, because you're the pussy here and he's the dick.

Stage Two, but you're still on the outside pounding on the door.
It opens and the smell is on you. You stub your toe on a jagged
memory and you're all hair and coins at Billy's, where its all Heart
Magic Man or maybe Barracuda. You're aware of your crotch
for the first time today. And it makes you sad. You're too clean
to be here, but fact's fact and you can't wish away the touch.

It's usually somewhere in the middle, which can be just about
anywhere, depending on how long he is this time.
You start noticing wrinkles you can't smooth away,
the gut that won't suck in. It's the exact subject of the piece
or the slow reflection of it off the narrator, which
you think is the author because otherwise you're
lost. Maybe it's about a gash bleeding love into
the middle of second street. In another, a pause
after the troubled world has finally left him in peace.

And it is that moment which slides you to the end, a climax and denouement
holding hands, where his solitude shoves you out like an unwanted coda, while
his patience for you, Herculean, has brought him some invisible reward.

Standing the hall, you play your part as he plays his Mahler.
You imagine a fifth against his chest sinking into the chair,
only to rise against his own odds somewhere after you've gone,
forgetting you and taking his bow like a good long piss.

Px

What do you do when things stop making sense, when the routine is suddenly spotlit with a broken vibe, an inanity that renders even tender moments devoid of love?

When you are Jack's life, and you are a small plastic box with sentimental value.

When, what, and how? Does you merely drink himself back into neutral once again?

Reset the amnesia?

You are afraid to enter the shadows. Not out of fear of what awaits,
but out of fear they will underwhelm you, subtracting yet another possible excitement.

Is there mystery which never ends, is never exhausted because it posses no center?
Even the bottomless pit eventually empties to some other side.

The secret then -- to maintain orbit and never land, bore through to the core.

There lies mystery in only the approach of the other.

On the other side, you're back to start.

Afterglow

An ocean
Cream calm and wide
Tides that breathe with a secret pulse


One by one
We held you
Until the waters stirred
And sounds found and
Turned us depth and victim
Into something unfathomable


Watching now
I see the moonlight has you right
A scented vista fleshed by shadow
Dreaming of pure annihilation

Because Sometimes This Thing is Just a Diary...

May 26, 2011

Sometimes it's all just too much. The routine and its ignorant constraint. The desired abandon - a childlike hunger for the open air and sultry breeze - whose adult consequence puts the rigors of virtue to shame. Second gear that refuses to be found when you are feeling good about yourself. How sometimes you just can't get the day off of you fast enough. Trying to lose your pants and the zipper just doesn't work.

Even the rusted gears of trying to make sense of all of the movement and haling. That, too, gets swallowed into a greater sphere that manifests right around daybreak. The lessons learned are not clean and only define themselves as such by virtue of their shadows cast upon your conscience. A firm, stray thought cast before you in the middle of nowhere. A declaration like a sentence. You alone to decide its fate. Poked and prodded into bona fide epiphany or left on the shoulder like once living road kill. To be carried away or abandoned to rot. A piece of something important now useless even to itself. ~

Excerpt from Unnamed Work in Progress...

“You need to get laid, my friend.”

Peter had had enough of my wistful staring. He was not buying me drinks to have me sit out the game.

“You offerin’?”

“Shit, I would if I thought it would help.”

“Sorry, Just thinky.”

“Let me guess: art stuff, right? Man, why can’t you just worry about the same stuff the rest of us do? You don’t say a word when you’re selling CDs for gas money, but heaven forbid we get a new Poet Laurette you don’t like, and you’re depressed for a fucking week.”

 “Laureate.”

 “What?”

 “It’s Poet Laureate.”

 “See, who cares? I think you’re an alien from the planet Photon or something. That would explain it, except you never have goodies like lasers or anything. What good is an alien with nothing to offer the good people of earth?”

The best question I’d heard in a while. It’s not just the culture of this country, but the race of beings currently at the helm at the rock as a whole. Product is everything. Screw creation in the shadows, and forget the future. It’s production logged and measured in units available to the public. It’s black and white, over the tender shoulder head shots on double-glossy business cards. Bob Rauch – Novelist. Roberto Mist, Esq. – Poet. The thought made me queasy and the truth of it made me head for the men’s. I passed under the neon that buzzed the same whether the evening was shaping up to be a win or loss for the nighthawks at the diner, the same it had since that night Spider John got crazy after his set and nailed it with a lowball glass. He doesn’t play her anymore. Maybe he got queasy, too, fed up with the kids talking over his songs and not listening to anything an alien like him might have to offer. Maybe he’s been hiding out here in the stall. Maybe its his spaceship. No, not tonight. Nothing but errant piss and toilet tags. Post-modern literature as deemed by the Council on Reversed Baseball Caps. I find myself searching it for real bits of wisdom underneath the bogroll, like looking in the mirror for signs of a hand well played. But until they show up, I'll wait. I'm patient. Aliens are patient. I'll keep looking. And one day I'll show up and I'll have it tucked in the palm of my hand. I'll wait until the band takes a break, because aliens are considerate, then I'll buy the bar a round. Peter'll set in, and that's when I'll whip it out. He'll think it's a joke, try to knock it away, but I will hold it up and he will see it is for the good people of earth and it will be shiny and the future and I'll make sure everyone sees the look on his face. I'll make sure everyone sees the look on his face when he notices it's set to kill.

Robots of Hamm

Robots enter and exit the bar across the street. Their Cylon sunglasses make them invincible. As they approach, the bored servers seem surprised at the business. They say nothing but do not like that they are not human.

Teenagers gather in the center of the plaza. They are tight and lanky and they smoke and glance to ensure they are doing it correctly. They sway from side to side as if it warms them, as if a rhythmic movement will attract something for them, anything at all that will justify their collective unconscious.


A hiker zigzags slowly through the courtyard. He has climbed mountains you and I don't like to think about. Has cooked vicious meals by yon river. Ashcan to ashcan with a walking stick, looking for something important we idiots have left behind.