mr. soporific [2002]

in mere minutes I’ll be bidding goodnight to this bloodshot world of fallacy and human congestion. onward to more desperate climes. I try not to believe in hell. because if I did I’d never get anything done. (I’m behind schedule as it is.)

“it’s not what you know, but what you think you know.”

all the spin doctors in the world take their cues from idiots. the foolish savvy must scratch through the trash to retain their equilibrium, and I’m 3 feet deep in liquor nightmares. yes, I’ve memorized the sound of the other shoe dive-bombing the floor. it sounds suspiciously like a female voice saying, “your name here.”

the television set can only proselytize so much, before you’ve gotta find another false idol to worship. these eyes are mine, no matter how horribly they betray me. I can taste the smoke in the air long before the inferno.

I press lies to my ears, to drown out the noise.

of so many assholes and their useless toys.

I abandoned all of my convictions on some random intersection choked with heavy metal traffic. the ill-yellow streetlights have no use for me of late. …left cold and tired in some asphalt wasteland, buried up to my throat in past-tense’s… I pine for the day when I sleep it off permanently.

it’s piss-mental hours like these when I begin to believe in the myths of anesthetic. the voice of the world becomes all too fucking loud. there’s a moth on my monitor (useless little fucker) and I forget the places my hand has been. if only they could see me sitting here, gripping my ego’s cock like a consolation prize. if only they could smell the foul breath emanating from my philosophy. pluming like a sour cloud of stolid cynicism. all oily and erroneously functional. I’m a machine running on the wrong fuel. pools of vinegar soaking the walls of my skull. acridly accrued in the corners where my youthful convictions cower. 

the army of bitter tongues in my brain 

bawl their rally cry of raw awareness.

nothing but stale dreams and outdated porn. old grand-dad wipes; the slate’s clean. my arsenal of strident fuck-you’s is bloating. threatening to spill over into my calmer minutes. they’ve grown restless from disuse. made obsolete by alcohol abuse. it’s fucking funny from a certain point of view.

of late I’ve learned how to put the reigns on my mood. I’m in an Ice Age; my face offers the world an arctic landscape. and it’ll take more than some fiery damsel in diseased distressed to thaw away this frost from my smirk. leave all that shit to the loud drunken choir shouting out from my CD player. it’s their recipe from which I’m made. 

the lunatics in my skull become more agitated with every passing night. I watch them all scurry to one corner or another, as I sentence myself to my own. the lunatics are mine, and they know what I know. bedtime is a torture wrought upon sightless slaves. 

time to allay what’s been stunting my growth today.

and it’s not God’s doing ‘cause he’s got better things to do. he’s got his own fucking mortgage payments due. all the checks are postdated to December 23rd, 2012.           

nous sommes désespérés [written 4.06.2009]

“…INDIFFERENCE IS THE ENEMY…”
let the record stand that we have failed, and continue to do so. and let the record show, that our failures (current and ongoing) have cost our children their future. 
I beg your meager pardon if you’ve heard this invective before. however, the most important lessons must be repeated until they are assimilated. and, thus far, America has only assimilated the worst traits possible. we are, the majority of us, indolent, selfish, ignoble and feckless. as well as a veritable profusion of other equally appalling adjectives. however, the worst adjective to describe us is that we are irredeemable. 
so, while we are all baring our teeth, like the hyenas we are, we might as well smile and welcome our ensuing ruin. because, make no mistake you absolute fuckers, it is coming. and that quicker than we think.
“…DOWN THROUGH THE WRECKAGE AND THE RUINS…”
the change that so many of us seem to be awaiting, while we twirl upon our collective thumbs, comes with a very corpulent price. (those with $ signs in their eyes, please read no further.) that price is no less than our diligence. no less than our ability to provide for ourselves. no less than our freedom to enhance our lives, on our own terms. we are dumb-wittingly mortgaging our independence for convenience. 
I ask you: what is the point of freedom, if you are so fucking feckless to utilize it?   
            














  
        

    
 

dystopian garage trilogy [written 2003-04?]

1.

“bend,” says the wind, “or I will break you.” and no longer can we play games with its tone. the seasons change without consultation and the forecast is a dirge. a swansong being played every half hour on every frequency. the world is alive with its ruin. 

2.

the rain falls like a thousand ice-tipped arrows; falling from a masochistic heaven. my grin tastes the torrent with hungry teeth. “hungry teeth for a hungry world.” says the distorted prophet drowning in the gutter. and now, the wind is newly armed. “bend.” it says, but this time we are immune to its threats. this time, we have our own new armament. or so we may dream. and maybe, this time, the dream is enough?

3.

“oblivion is mythical.” says the gutter-prophet shifting the timber of his voice upward into some sort of prayer. (the tundra, you know, can be so eloquent.) yet, I’m growing weary of quotes from the cold. warmer wisdom could I glean from the lump of rusted chain on the stained concrete floor. oh, but what of the footsteps in the flange? rendered reprehensible by mixing boards of ill-repute. “hardy-fuckin-har.” says the insect voice from the scofflaw intercom speaker. “just read your lines the way they were laser-scalpeled.” it is our duty, after all, to report the truth as it was beaten out of us.

the complete idiot’s guide to heart surgery [written 2005]

mainlining disappointment. maybe if I open a vein the blood will form the words for me? like some macabre divination? I’ve developed an acute repugnance for sobriety, so the blood will be good and thin.

I fucking died this week. yet my legs still carry me to work. you killed me, yet you’re still free to dance about my ruins. you, my mute murderer. the toll of blood has still to be taken, but it feels like a fucking massacre inside. and, reason is the worst casualty by far. 

this wasteland is not mine to get lost in, yet it claims me just the same. I am its phantom limb. I am its articulate slave. perhaps I was one child too many for you? well, only the pain can tell. and it tells me nothing but the announcement of itself.

I see my future and it looks like a pool of offal. unclean and a complete fucking waste. I see my future, and it’s a cracked mirror.

cinders make up my synapses, when my thoughts belong to proverbial HER.

KYPHOSIS [written 2008]

do not condemn the fallen. 

we find one another through barbed digital channels, our forelocks jutting chaotic towards the nearest oasis. blame falls with grift upon its details. spattered across the map of angel feathers and blood. silver dust, coruscating into the sinuses of the presumed holy, might as well be depleted uranium. realign yourself as a revivalist, ‘cause the pit calls for forward philosophy. in the almanacs it’s named <RISK>. 

ipecac eyes [written 2004]

conversation is a shade that spooks your understanding. you could be stoic in an autumn paradise of fire, but subtext will make pretty ruins of it. something for your memories to peruse, while you avoid the jagged bits. but they’re still there, and they’ll always want attention.

“yea, tho I walk through the valley of the shadow of HER…” [pause] “what was it that I’m not supposed to fear?”

some glimmering nightmare in black & purple. some lovely spasm in viscera drenched with amber undoing and lack of sleep. or, was it lack of purpose? headlights turn my eyes into stained glass, and the world blurs on by. normally there is music, but tonight the music is this frenetic thoroughfare. with its exhaust and its distant screams and its unholy quiet.

“where would you rather be? what sights would you rather see?”  says Ol’ Man Gutter, his wisdom coming off like a tyrant without an army.

the night doesn’t need us to survive. it has constant tribulation to stay alive. something for the shadows to scoff. something for the eyes to pierce. and ultimately flee in bewildered glee. glazing over with exquisite anxiety. and, the calendar is the only gospel worth scrutiny.

these plaintive skins are no longer their own. they belong to the mysteries that suck on their pores like angelic leeches. an entirely new form of sustenance, enriched by foreign bleaches and everyday deformity. just remember the mountain doesn’t know that you are climbing it.

“tonight is only what tomorrow is not.” says Ol’ Man Gutter with his ipecac eyes and his breath that smells of dead flowers. “imagine this,” he says, “right now, someone is having the best moment of their life.” the bruised sky cannot help but unhinge before such brutal optimism.

broken burlesque [written 2002-2003?]

ask the mantis

NO BROCHURE FOR A BROKEN AMERICA.

beaten burlesque of a life I still don’t know how to live. bruised breath for my greatest excuses. hung on the line, such a familiar cue. culled in the clinch, such a derivative queue.
nameless endgames look on toothy. the altar grows choked with unalloyed offerings of exit strategies.
but, I prefer my ruin on the rocks…just ask the mantis standing watch outside my door. I name him Tecate, and collapse upon the pavement. nesting like a stupefied libertine among the detritus.
“oh god, is this the rapture? or am I simply that submissive?”
salvation is a chameleon. a demon with a face of unimaginable elasticity. it is privy to your secrets, like the walls of a glass house awaiting the wrecking ball.

favored culdesacs

if I’m trying to convince anyone of my brilliance,

then maybe the cramps in my style will do the talking?

for me, it has become a question of endurance.

“I’ll drink to that!”

but don’t get too excited,

‘cause I’ll drink to just about anything.

encyclopedic knowledge

of torrid endeavor notwithstanding.

I know the name of static now. 

(the finest philosophers suffered the most.)

hardy-fucking-har.

sexual détente

I’d like to think of myself as a brown recluse of the intellect. I’d like to, but the truth is no less toxic. it shrivels me up into a boozy ball of tangled fantasies and I’m given over to an ostentatious, arm’s-length sort of social poise. a shit-sunny rubber mask of platitudes. everything is wide-eyed smiles, when all I really want to do is scream mindless obscenities and kick people to death. especially when I’m flashed special smiles from proverbial GIRL. a vision that I could whittle a quaint little life out of, but then her idiot reason for my romantic vacillation ambles up and jaws something inane, worthy of a pistol-whipping. so, I hump on in my state of sexual détente. 

born bibulous  

my inebriated preoccupation will surely become the compost of legend when I finally fuck-off this mortal coil. surely, some poor hateful soul out there will read me like gleaming graffiti.

Dylan Thomas, I got your fuckin’ number homey.

I could allow these words of mine to fade away into intellectual rubbish, like prehistoric fecal matter. knowing that some bottomline asshole will mine it like gold. but, what does it fucking matter, when the one thing equals the other, and the other equals the next cigarette?

the supplicant, all specious

…like whalesong on a cheap flange, I’m throttled astir by the discordant prose of the lowest common denominator. amidst this peculiar autumn apocalypse of the current calendar, all mangy with decrepit contrition. emotionally psoriatic and given over to a mute asphalt grey juggernaut of lethargy…

deep tissue disenchantment

I woke up with a crooked neck and a doubt the size of God. unsightly build-up of years&years looking over my shoulder. I went to the kitchen to scratch up a morsel or two; something to palliate this hollowed-outness. all I could find was the mockery of mouse poison, and a package of hot sauce.

so I took it all in stride, and washed it down with warm shower water, then pulling on my clothes like they were pathological rags. I listened to music that reminded me of dusty-bright asylum corridors. a fucking fitting soundtrack to the bone-white day, stretched out ahead of me like a desert artery. the promise of sugared poison to be my only companion.

sometimes it’s difficult to know whether to laugh or to cry, in response to this human burlesque daily scraping. just don’t ask me the answer now. I’m much too busy daring the clock to stop, so I can keep on punishing myself with liquor-slicked words of miasmatic mental rape. 

and by the way, where are my cigarettes?

id est…

still no further toward renascence.

some sandbag form of acquiescence.

conclusions drawn and quartered. 

an itch; refused to be squandered.