Song to Myself

I failed to update the Journal last week. Guilty. I was on the WTP (White Trash Patio) instead. Against my better judgment I transcribe from the night. I make no claims for coherence only melodrama. If you find meaning in it, let me know. To me it is only waves against the shore. Consider it a gift, a reason to point and laugh when we next meet.

THE OPENING PARAGRAPH of "The Night-Sea Journey" is designed, that is composed specifically, to be the very important-creating opening page of any future collection of self-referential writing. I will use it myself, I have no doubt, so perfectly laid out in literature English as it has been done. And I will do it

as others do, unabashedly, to add some arbitrary component of gravitas to my work. And all written work does strive to be important, most so by those who claim to want the exact opposite. The most grass-roots movement is, in fact, destined for momentary greatness. It has something

to do with the fire I'm trying to start. No. I'm not being metaphorical here like Jefferson Starship (why they had to move from an airplane to something grander had everything to do with their fall from grace) and Krispy Kreme. No

I am attempting, in vain it seems, to light a nice fire here on the patio. I should be inside composing my promised Thursday blog post. Who knows, perhaps the two will meet one day. I keep blowing the well placed embers in an attempt to breathe life into their potential. No. This sounds metaphorical again. I'm serious. Because it has to do with the way the almost flames almost catch the vertical log aflame. The approach licking it alive, but without the head needed to make the jump to full fire. Yes, that is metaphorical. The truth is that I. It licks in a sexual attempt to validate itself as agent of change. In truth. I want. I think

the wood is upset. Wet. Impotent even. There are those who may read this who know they could fix it. I'm sure you could. Sexual and energy morphed into Promethean skill sets. You'd think. You'd think I could, the way I like to ramble on. Something is amiss. it is because you. I'm certain it is because you are not here. There is but one person I hope reads this. They do not even know who they are. It is senseless. I know. But there

it is, redeemed by your strongest effort, but not your drive. The night is taking over. What strange lives we lead. What pleasures denied and deny. Things watch us and I turn away. But I see the power that instills those eyes. Do you want beyond subterranean consciousness, like the other I know like you? Alpha and Omega, once revered, now reduced to subsequence. How sad. To promote

life beyond the standard. What noble guesses glide to the edge of indiscretion?

Those who realize. Distant shores of knowing. Speeding caress that fuels them, but I want more. No. No and Gide's attic. I was there once. Parts of me never left. And it is in moments like these I try to go back and retrieve them. What fire. Strange the flame most deny even the notion of breath. I will no succumb, subscribe. Lead! What pleasures sustain beneath the lowest and basest of defined desire? To those. To those I secretly prostrate myself. Do you know? Do you adhere to the filament that has made me this?  You. You do not answer. As if silence fulfills you more and places you beyond me. And suddenly. And suddenly

this becomes about the wave I wait for, as I float out beyond the breakers. It is dark now, and I fade with the final glow into the horizon. What wan filigree to which I am prematurely reduced. I imagine you evolving as I sit stuck in some phase between liquid and gas. A sad and quiet fate. Sad and sad again. Yet I rebel. I fight it. With these words I do not go gentle... I strive to set into motion what you leave to reverie. What means I have used to approach. Strange. Seems I should have progressed so much further. The Night. That Wanton. The Day. That Convener. The reason I cannot stop this

because I haven't the strength to do it myself. I rely. I rely on the will of the body of the soul of the corpus of the mind. But none of this will be the relief. Come morning it will stand, the Convener wins, stands outside all just knowing or execution. And so do I, jingling cap and dance, the innocent sin of this all.

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Transmission from the Center of the Universe #259

There is a subtle difference between the sports bars drinkers and the better off homeless who traverse the pathways here at the Center of the Universe, specifically the Infinite Courtyard.  At first I believed. At first I believed it to be one single thing. While their attire is often remarkably similar in screaming color scheme, brand, and style, the former are lighter on their plodding heels. Drunk on booze rather than fatigue and dark brain hauntings, they transport themselves from table to street to wall to tab with a kinetic their counterparts don’t seem often to muster. It is an attempt at sobriety, this springy gait, an attempt at sobriety shoved into motion. They have plans and have every intention of wending their way to and through them. These plans, which grew shapely legs from bar napkins found at the base of their skulls, penned evenings facing endless times jukebox memorial and flags raised in a/c reverie. Plans now enacted, they are not more, but less real, vying for attention against the wind, breasts and the sweat of new laughters. And perhaps it is in the glow of this attention that the weight of their lives is lifted—if only the slightest—to keep them keeping on.

But their foils, equally aimless but without end of the trail abode. Their steps seem emptier but with more weight. Step. The earth around them bowing its head. A respect reserved for those having borne so much life discarded by the other side of luck. It is in them rivers empty, replete with detritus thought that genius could equal, yet rearranged. Step. The wraiths know which part of the food chain is proper, and it is against same they must defend themselves, turning the trip step corner for not home.

I have seen them collide on the street, these Doppelgängers. No, there. Just beyond the Great Arch of Eternity that bridges present and future. It is a rare and engaging encounter. An attempt at covalent bonding gone wrong. Watch the mirrored look that assumes both faces. Observe the connection, like a lightning or a sucker punch, as each countenance tries its best to deny the other and itself, attempts to negate time by reaching back, jumping forward through a tunnel created by the existence of the other. Sometimes it ends. Sometimes it ends with a voice from one or the other. A line cast through the haze of recognition. A line which never lands. An opportunity always lost to what is upon us. A scent. The hopeful spark of neon. Ass swing flower pendulum of the Holy Grail.  Ascent.

Domestic

in the key of Barth

If he is lucky, at some point the diligent writer finds himself at a crossroads, a great existential chasm like a decision or a doorjamb. One each side lies solid ground and in between yawns the deep known that will destroy him. He will have grown tired of the side on which he resides (else he will have set it ablaze, in an effort to get things going or instill his life with the fictional drama that arouses him). He will pick up the pen or the shotgun to find a way out. Searching the ground around him, he might fling debris into the gap in a vain attempt to fill it (see Midwest poetry ca. 2010). Or he may describe for the average reader the very average madness, about which we never speak. Especially at parties. He will pause to realize that this madness is or could be the abyss to be bridged and the means by which to do it. He decides on the latter and makes it the moving from the middle of the kitchen to the rusting patio furniture handed down by in-laws to purchase more, just as ugly. It the American way to. The writer would be quick to point out that it has nothing to do with the actual movement from inside to out - which is, as it happens, south, that is to imply down, as in Hell - which gives rise to the aforementioned mad. It has everything to do with the exchange which transpires just prior to this exit, which instigates it, galvanizes it, causing it to rise up from the caste of mere displacement from one locale to another, to the physical manifestation of the desire to flee the scene ultimately. Writers need to include a sense of the kinetic, sometimes subtle, sometimes involving helicopters. To flee the scene ultimately, the scene here being city, state, country, and domestic planet. But no protagonist has been established, but merely implied by all this directional garbage. Nonetheless, the aforementioned exchange which led to the exit onto bland patio begins actually ten years ago, pulling the rug from under no less than all of us. It isn't fair. Writers can't just do whatever they. Ten years ago this September and ends 2.5 seconds before the body is turned and marched doorward. Were the reader the researcher type (and some are), it could be conjectured that this act was foretold even further back, before the marriage. The early-to-mid twenties, when longing for both home and away undergoes a certain puberty, hair, stink, and mood and all. Every compound, does it not, allow itself to be broken down into its native constituents? Though here the exchange, we will call it an argument for the sake of it, is exactly that - a compound and heated at that. I would not call it a solution. The native constituents. Hers: the single mother crone who is to be revered, now broken, spoiled, and parading dour before everyone as if by penance. His: the early outcast complex made usable by pressure on all sides along with the discovery of the word in all its nefarious forms. Together, a joined quest for the new and need for the creation of the old within it. And so it happens, and with success, because time is a native constituent, too, and one which must be taken into the equation. We must not behave as amateurs. Time, the constituent with a timer, expending its own pressure with a slowly growing erection toward its death. The rack. Contractions. In imitation of a worthy narrative it builds to a point of change that must be logical and must contain within it a violence for flavor. So it happens five lines from the end. Her need for the security of the nest and his desire not be rendered insane by it. A door, south and east, slams. Vector forces, cut. A baby cries as it imagines a balloon floating off. A god somewhere in the woman turns away, as the man wanders outside, kicks chairs for looking at, wonders why, wonders how long it will take to write about changing places with time.

Respect

The bartender was bleach dirty blonde, and I don't just mean her hair. Late 30's, she was still a player kept healthy by constant movement, gardening, engaging with the children in the back yard and on the other side of the bar. Knee-length, acid-washed shorts, tank top with the kind of rack you direct a buddy to. But with a matronly air, that said you talk with her about other women. Many a bartender can flash a smile for the win, but she was different. It. never. stopped. I watched closely as she restocked the rail, changed channels looking for the game, poured beers and shots. Her smile was the only constant. It was comforting to think she was having a good time, someone who was at the right place at the right time and getting a check to boot. Soon, because I can't leave a good thing alone, I started seeing it as a burden. Something she keeps up because she's being watched. A bad action-thriller plot point. I imagined a look powered by the steady flow of Red Bull, momentum, and a growing stack of damp singles. She called everyone darlin', smiled at the ways of men, and never batted an eye when the word pussy was crumpled and tossed to the floor. I decided she was just solid, the kind to keep her sanity in a routine anything but. The kind of solid that said though it was fun to try, there isn't an orgasm strong enough that could keep her down for long.

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.