Here is a new song... well the lyrics,
By day I'm alone in this hall,
With just an aquarium light to guide me
By night I'm a storied wreck,
looking for a light at sea
By day I live with open mouths,
a vacant spot by the quay
By night I sleep besides ten cent Casanovas
stealing my covers away
In the morning I hear the church bell,
In the night I hear the toll
this reckless indecision,
it's creeping down my hall
Verse
With rough hands I sawed this thing together,
With deft fingers I tear it apart
There will be no time for reconcilliation
When I'm done there won't be anywhere to start
Sunday, May 07, 2006
Monday, April 24, 2006
If You Smoke Out The Rats, You Have to Leave Too
When the bomb exploded over Hiroshima the blast left spectral shadow images of the previous residents on sidewalks and walls. A man, a previous resident of Hiroshima who recently left for the war, walked those shadowed streets recognizing the cameo of friends, enemies, and ex-lovers in each shade he met. Around the same time a clerk, with ink smudged hands and wire rimmed glasses, was working feverishly deep inside the Kremlin. His job was simple; erase Trotsky and his supporters from all public documents. A third man, prominent in his profession, disappeared beneath shimmering daggers, muttering a simple question, "Et tu Brute?" Each has a prominent role to play in the schema of my mind right now.
I am walking through my past history, old friends, old loves, old betrayals, with an eraser in my hand. I put my mood as indescribable for the reason that it involves a miasma of emotions. Being a writer I, naturally, fall in to metaphor, parable... taking a note from our good Lord. However, I may be on the wrong track and Mr. Hemmingway would be of better use now.
It was over, has been over, been dead for over three years. She has moved on and so have I. But while our relationship was still allowed in my mind I've now discovered that I was given a rotten orange. As Claudio reflects in "Much Ado About Nothing," that,
...you are more intemperate in your blood
Than Venus, or those pamp'red animals
That rage in savage sensuality.
But perhaps I rely too much on delicacy. Edward Murrow and Cronkite, smoking their cigarettes would frown, there's no delicacy outside the gates of eden. I am avoiding the blow, I'm an easy dancer, and all life is a stage. Let's take stock in what has been provided by the author up to this point: A. I'm upset B. It involves a past love C. Betrayal D. An author unwilling to confront his emotions.
Let's move on, True Believers, to a basement bar. The light is dim and the sound of laughter is echoing throughout the room. Suddenly, a shout rings out like a shot. A couple emerge from the bathroom with a blush of guiltiness, not modesty. They are accosted by slurring mammoth, the beau is shoved by the beast. The mammoth roars, "He was making out with my wife!" Although the mammoth saw it with his gigantic eye, who would believe a slurring mammoth? Eventually the crowd brings him under the rod with deceit and treachery wrapped in the cloak of friendliness. He believes them, shit, they are his friends, and he was drunk, perhaps it was all pink elephants. In the end the mammoth bows and lets them take rides on his hairy back. Justice, after all, wears a blindfold.
Lastly is the tale of the goggled monkey. The goggled monkey is the mammoth's best friend, best mammoth. The mammoth feels he can trust the the goggled monkey. But the mammoth is slow moving and too trusting. "Stupid mammoth," thinks the girl and the goggled monkey. So often trust is taken for stupidity. The monkey had busy hands, and his hands didn't escape the mammoth's gigantic eyes, but the mammoth thought to himself, "the goggled monkey rides on my back every day, he would never trade me away." The girl, although a used model, still was a better ride and with busy hands they rode together. The mammoth thought to himself, "perhaps she is his back up." In this the mammoth was stupid.
Mammoths are extinct now, to the detriment of all mankind. When we do find them, they are soggy icicles. The world is full of men, and men are full of the world. This elephant remembers... and thought of a day of reckoning.
I am walking through my past history, old friends, old loves, old betrayals, with an eraser in my hand. I put my mood as indescribable for the reason that it involves a miasma of emotions. Being a writer I, naturally, fall in to metaphor, parable... taking a note from our good Lord. However, I may be on the wrong track and Mr. Hemmingway would be of better use now.
It was over, has been over, been dead for over three years. She has moved on and so have I. But while our relationship was still allowed in my mind I've now discovered that I was given a rotten orange. As Claudio reflects in "Much Ado About Nothing," that,
...you are more intemperate in your blood
Than Venus, or those pamp'red animals
That rage in savage sensuality.
But perhaps I rely too much on delicacy. Edward Murrow and Cronkite, smoking their cigarettes would frown, there's no delicacy outside the gates of eden. I am avoiding the blow, I'm an easy dancer, and all life is a stage. Let's take stock in what has been provided by the author up to this point: A. I'm upset B. It involves a past love C. Betrayal D. An author unwilling to confront his emotions.
Let's move on, True Believers, to a basement bar. The light is dim and the sound of laughter is echoing throughout the room. Suddenly, a shout rings out like a shot. A couple emerge from the bathroom with a blush of guiltiness, not modesty. They are accosted by slurring mammoth, the beau is shoved by the beast. The mammoth roars, "He was making out with my wife!" Although the mammoth saw it with his gigantic eye, who would believe a slurring mammoth? Eventually the crowd brings him under the rod with deceit and treachery wrapped in the cloak of friendliness. He believes them, shit, they are his friends, and he was drunk, perhaps it was all pink elephants. In the end the mammoth bows and lets them take rides on his hairy back. Justice, after all, wears a blindfold.
Lastly is the tale of the goggled monkey. The goggled monkey is the mammoth's best friend, best mammoth. The mammoth feels he can trust the the goggled monkey. But the mammoth is slow moving and too trusting. "Stupid mammoth," thinks the girl and the goggled monkey. So often trust is taken for stupidity. The monkey had busy hands, and his hands didn't escape the mammoth's gigantic eyes, but the mammoth thought to himself, "the goggled monkey rides on my back every day, he would never trade me away." The girl, although a used model, still was a better ride and with busy hands they rode together. The mammoth thought to himself, "perhaps she is his back up." In this the mammoth was stupid.
Mammoths are extinct now, to the detriment of all mankind. When we do find them, they are soggy icicles. The world is full of men, and men are full of the world. This elephant remembers... and thought of a day of reckoning.
Wednesday, February 15, 2006
Everything is getting dimmer
I don't know if you've noticed it, true believers, but I have found myself drowsing. Not the pseudo-sleep of Sunday afternoons watching football, rather, a intellectual/sensory kind of sleep. I remember being younger, with the world still being full of wonder, and it seemed like my senses were more intense and acute. Now, being the jolly old age of thirty one I am starting to feel dull, thrust into the dirt too many times. I've grown too accustomed of this world. I need to shake myself awake, scrub myself clean, and take to the world again with a pair of new eyes. But how should I do this? I don't want to be as reckless as I was in my youth, or is that the precise answer? Maybe I should seek this out over the vast world, following in the honorable footsteps of Guthrie, Kerouac, Ulysses, or good old Huck Finn. Maybe I should follow the path inward and look to Thomas Merton, Whitman, or some half starved yogi contemplating Vishnu on the Lotus blossum. Maybe Hunter and Rimbaud knew it best and I should just take two tabs of acid, a half a quart of gin, and innumerable pills, and see the good doctor in the morning. All I know is that something's got to give. The the contentedness of all of these zombies is beginning to wear off on me. I feel my eyes getting heavier, and the chimes of marriage and Home Depot ring softly in my ears. My arms are lifting, perpendicular to my shoulders and the days run together. Down in my immense gut is a small voice crying, "Rage, rage against the dying of the light." But I fear that soon even that will be extinguished. If you see me, listless, mumbling to myself about the benefits of my 401K, wearing an Ambercrombie & Fitch shirt, some workout pants, and a chest as clean as a newborn babe, remember what you do when you see a zombie. You shoot them between the eyes.
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