Sunday, November 16, 2014

beat

“It’s the beat generation, it’s béat, it’s the beat to keep, it’s the beat of the heart, it’s being beat and down in the world and like oldtime lowdown and like in ancient civilizations the slave boatmen rowing galleys to a beat and servants spinning pottery to a beat… He has a face that looks like everybody you’ve ever known and seen on the street in your generation, a sweet face --- hard to describe --- sad eyes, cruel lips, expectant gleam, swaying to the beat, tall, majestical --- waiting in front of the drug store… ”



STAND UP TO A GIANT and too drunk to know, to remember, to realize, ah well any of the damage that it would evoke, the giant, that giant, the one slam, bam, cheek burned, turned red, bruised ugly, still a badge of honor, smile, at least in my book, and my face, my charm, disarm, never looked better, cameras galore, ah! what self-important clamor, glamour, I’m just the asshole that looks down on the rest, distress, digress, only because I think I’m just so wise, atheistic calm, this is my charm, smile on my face, looking down, just because I’m sacrosanct and irreverent, flexed jaw, shaking my head, simply, slightly, you really can’t match me, my special brand of sanctimony, and I, so cavalierly, walk around proudly, knowingly, intelligently, the idealistic dreamer, stupid, moronic utopia believer, but only in the ways that profit me, the ways that mesmerize me, all the selfishness of blasphemy, ah me, oh please, this is the magnanimity of my individual fate. I see everything, even the things I pretend not to see, the burden of a seer with not much to see, makes reverie, an all-important prophesy, but I never cared about such insanities, I’m more about realities, but notionless, painlessness, the nameless nothingness of real life tends to bore me sensationally, and nobody adores me, like a Shiloh I want more, the world to revolve around me, haha, so Shiloh-esk in my wants, and the rest, they don’t care for more, I don’t know why and I won’t pretend to buy into all of the useless, pretentious shit that is cast out and cast off to the world around me, society, they are useless virtue ethicists who just want role models to emulate, let’s castrate all the followers, they don’t have any powers of intellect, no phronesis, the thing that meets this and maybe signifies frontal lobe capacity.



SAME STORY EVERY NIGHT, ah! night after night, wake up at 3 something, is this what we play for, pray for, animals prey for actual things, we just ruminate and frustrate, we know nothing, want everything, stupid playthings, tiny little simple things, and all this noise is still ringing, my ears deafening, it’s 3 am, and tossing and turning, is it anything, or nothing, all the fears manifested, the things I don’t want pestering me, festering within me, all the criticisms of another day, after me, saying to me, this is your destiny, I don’t care about prophesy, hardly care about veracity, tenuous hold on reality, are they really after me, for the things I said in blasphemy, while I was drunk and they were prodding me, for a quote they could publish, ah sensational me, is this what’s left for me, empty vacancy, I hate non-negotiability, free me, devastate me, placate me, I’m up for anything, this all bores me, and now I’m repeating things, night after night brings, the same old destinies, it’s 3 AM again, nothing is different, I’m still obsessing over yesterday, another day, the dawn doesn’t inspire me, not like it used to, I’m used up, another sucker after money, just so I can function, have the simple things I want, rise above the stupid little debt I made when I was twenty-two, nubile, youth, not thinking about the future, this future, all the things I would have to pay for, the bore, what a chore, I’m still after the everything while they suck all the production out of me, every cent, it’s indecent, but I’m not supposed to complain, embrace shame, just because I signed my life away at twenty-two, such abuse, how are we supposed to use, any of this to grow, mature, endure all the stupid little silly things that we have to, I’m not sure, but I think I want to fuck the system, inspire them, embrace the realm, the nowhere kid that I’ve become, until we are among them, or fuck them, either way, I’m complacent, indifferent, insignificant, isn’t this the nowhereness that we all inspired, the riot, only glamorous when they cover us, only glorified when people don’t fuck us.



MY FRIENDS SAY ALL SORTS OF THINGS, some about me, critical, anti-revolutionary, I mean anti-revelatory things, things I already know and sort of already have admitted to myself, one way or another, but oh well, things like ah hmm, well Lux is only dating that guy and fucking that guy and being with that guy because he’s hot, or cute, or whatever, not clever, she doesn’t dig him, not like she should, she just digs shallow, unimportant things, like looks and money, really just looks, and I guess that’s right, correct, on point, at least sort of kind of, because I would get with a hot guy but I wouldn’t get with an ugly guy with lots of money, but I’m also really just uninterested and unimpressed with the rest, at least so far as it seems to be absent in its entirety, a nonexistent threshold of hypocritical, fiendish, antisocial society, but of course at the same time, me such a ridiculous contradiction, do so want it all, at some point, the hotness and the personality, the ambition and the prosperity, the money, ah the whole fucking package, oh fine I admit it, and I don’t want anything less, a compromise, no thanks, all these boys, ah geeze, c’mon, there is always something wrong, they’re not that hot or not that smart or bad conversationalists, or bad in bed, or afraid of the dark, yeah that happened once, and also I am so completely disillusioned and unimportant, irrelevant and disconcerted, disconnected, malcontent, all the lines of the spectrum, and I don’t give a fuck about anything at all, and I’m also paranoid as hell, yeah really fucking paranoid, stack-all-your-furniture-up-against-the-door-in-the-height-of-night paranoid, really worried about the wrong kind of people coming after me at the right kind of time, making success, unrest, ah me, I detest this feeling of being so unnerved, perturbed, disturbed, and it doesn’t help that in the middle of the night, the right sort of paranoid thought descends, a trend, and I can’t think of anything else but the thought, the certainty, that we are all going to die, that we were all born to die, to become this gray sort of ash, we will be nothing more than the Earth, dirt, I can’t assert how terribly awful that realization makes me feel, especially in the middle of the night, vulnerable night, panic, heart racing, type of middle of the night revelations, and then the realization comes, I’m gonna die someday I just know it, I’m working right now toward my grave, as we all are, and my life means nothing, it won’t make a sound, no history to save it, I’m never going to make it, and even if history could save it, it wouldn’t even matter in the long run, the big scheme of things, because I’ll be gone and everyone I ever knew will be gone too, ah the mad disasters of chaos forced upon us, I hate it and yet only getting high can lessen the blow of it all, such a ridiculous disconcertment, we are fretting the same kind of stuff they did in the forties and fifties, it never ends, and even the realization of truth, my soft tan skin will one day decompose, fill the dirt, and be nothing more than compost, it can’t lesson a burden because how can I possibly thrive or even survive with that knowledge on the forefront of my mind, making me know it, the kind of stuff that makes me gasp at fucking 3 AM? And now, despite my raving, conniving, diving into inner psyche for reasoning, trying to believe in something, once again finding nothing, I’m still trying to have the good life, take advantage of everything, the absence of nothing, is writing a something, I hardly know how to respond in kind. To be honest, and I think I should, I imagine writing to be a nothing, but that’s a different thing, or is it a better thing, a thing i want, or think would be cool, too cruel, I don’t know, whatever, nevermind, it’s just a rip-off of Nirvana anyway.




I’M SUCH AN ASSHOLE, mostly in the way that I cannot relate to any other person, no matter how hot he is, and I have no interest in engaging in the things he wants to, the things he finds important, no real interest in finding a guy for the long-term, the short term is long enough, and it never mattered much to me if he was nice, I’ve been hung-up on hassles for so long, hotness matters more than niceness, attraction, chemical, seminal, electric attraction, can’t say enough for, what matters most, hotness. And really there is no point writing this down, starved in waking hours, tormented in sleeping hours, struggling to do things at once, survive and make it, and I’m only surviving and only barely, and all the things I do to survive the days haunt me at night, and I run so fast and so hard I start thinking, like Kerouac, is death really the ultimate reward, a time to rest, relax, no longer struggle for meaningless accolades? Is it unanswerable, like so many other questions and ponders, wondering things that don’t matter, that never mattered …

Sunday, November 9, 2014

“I have seen the best minds of my generation destroy’d by madness --- etcetera.” Desolation Angels

Here below lies the uncaptured reveries, the careless spewings, the poolside viewings, the classless classifyings, the opportunistic offerings, and the smack-satiated subtleties of another world, stupid little world, essentially the toilings of my only talents, and yeah…. Wouldn't you?

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THE RUN, THE SUN, MIDDLE NOVEMBER and eighty degree weather, only in Southern California, and only in this distinct location on the west coast, I think I’ve lacked fulfillment, all these years, it’s been routinely weird, running off on the same path, the internal wrath of knowing life is going nowhere, shuffling on a set that looks like somewhere, New Mexico any season USA, the desert weather, rock formations against cerulean blue sky, I can’t lie, I’ve been hypnotized, at least on occasion, running the path toward civilization, past the rattlesnake demon territory of lost glory, old cultivation machinery from 1980, probably 1880, height of industrial revolution infamy, how is it still a story or in existence, rusted and reticent, some leftover relic, abandoned by dumbass unrepentant litterers, on the sideway highway, the place I run past everyday on five mile glory. The days, months, years pass so fast when we try to catch up and follow tired routines, it’s boring, but still we cling, it’s better than nothing, I suppose it kind of grows on us, why make a fuss, when we are living and earning and learning, buzzing and showing, is it the best we can offer, proffer, something better than mediocre, tired dreams, obscene, how can we bring more to the table, the equation, it’s basic and yet unrealistic, I’ve tried this, now tired of this, how do we overcome our sick-ness, to get beyond this, feeling of absolute frenziness? I can’t adjust, still kind of sort of hoping to make it beyond this, beyond a place confined by stupid pride, and arrogance, and ideologists, to something possible, probable, acceptable, this is my careful lure, a charm I’ve never had to arm, but I accept all the wrong if it can lead me to something right, a great and honorable light at the end of the endless tunnel of my life, something akin to a miracle, I want to make it despite all the stupid and cunningly self-deprecating condescension, here we have a great big lesson, this stress and nowhereness could end us, and I’m so nowhere that I hardly care, I can’t feel despair, substances are all liars, they build me up just to watch me fall, I can’t handle it all, I just keep thinking about how we are all going to the soil someday, to rot, decompose, and decay, the thought of it makes me asphyxiate, unable to communicate, words important enough, worthy enough, to actually publish.

“It’s hard enough to live in a world where you grow old and die.” -- Desolation Angels, 222




IT WAS AT L. R. GREEN that I first realized that I would die someday and that it was a terrifying prospect, on all accounts, especially for a nine year old kid and especially for me personally, even at that age, as golden as it was somber, my favorite number, because I was already so extraordinarily unwilling to see myself as something mortal, someone who could one day submit to the godforsaken rot, decay, decomposition, the proposition, disposition, ah, it disgusted me thoroughly, made me trembly, my heart beating faster, thinking of the rot, skin hot, red, slimy, clammy, how could it happen to me, ME? And I was also so cavalier, arrogant, developing situational, appropriated emotional distance, and I couldn’t for the life of me, even at the tender age of nine, my childhood prime, I could not believe in any kind or any type of supernatural, superbeing, or deity, nothing, no Santa Clause and no Easter Bunny, they made no rational sense to me, so I couldn’t be comforted in my revelation, ah death will come for me, not me, yes me, like the other kiddies, the irrational, unthinking, sheepish unseeing ones, the ones who believed in heaven and hell because they were told to, compelled to, ask not the definition of faith, just have it! what a crock of shit, the biggest scam since DNA kits, they can tell you anything, everything, but the faith delusion has been around much longer than any of that nonsense, and I suppose it quiets some in the rows, the pews, the simple-minded, the unrelenting, unthinking sort, seeking penance for sins undone, unthought, will be thought, will be done, on the run, I guess it’s fun, and anyway I won’t be restrained, obtained, not in the fashion so constrained, I’ll do what I want, when I want, so American, part of a dying trend, we are the end, the ones who question every honorable mention for some kind of collaboration, cronyism, collusion, the delusion, such grandeur I aspire to, gone, gone, gone, and if only I had known it back in the days of green field runs, laborious tunnel tag in the sun, I used to brag about athleticism, now I shrug about intelluctalism, it’s all so abhorrent, days, weeks years tormented, but I knew back in grade school, death was imminent, any insincere sentiments, to the utmost contrary, a lost story, it was at L. R. Green that I first learned desultory and unprideful indignations, nothing will save us, in hundred years time, Earth will still be in its prime, but we will all be long dead and fed to the soil, the planet will have us, ah turmoil, I can’t stand this.



ALL MY FRIENDS HATE ME or would hate me if they knew what I truly was, a wolf in sheep’s clothing, or rather merely the kind of kid that can’t really listen, nodding head in agreement, yet too hung up on other problems to give full attention, the deficit disorder, always looking for something new to impress me, the reason behind the madness that messes with me, that I nevertheless perpetrate, attention at a deficit, can’t sit still, always looking for some way to get ahead, make money in the way I want to, how can we be so illiterate, so illogical, so changed from where we were, back in the day, where words and thoughts mattered extensively, we argued about their integrity, where our lives weren’t spent on obsessing over other silly trivialities, like celebrities, politicians, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, irrelevant and unimportant people just striving and trying for our lacking attention, am I the only one who is done with all of them? I want to travel back to the good old days where novelists were society’s fortune tellers, the respected sellers, the ones who had talent enough to write words, not unravel it all courtesy of mindless politicians, presidents with selfish objectives looking for fame and lasting impression. My friends all hate me for being pretentious, though I’m often or at least sometimes good intentioned, and regardless of all my silly ramblings, interests that still mean nothing, I just want something better than ordinary, idealist in nature and I suppose nobody cares about revelry, not anymore, letting the future know what we were like, the struggles and logic of our times, the good old days, such an ambiguous phrase, why can’t today be the good old days, I guess it will be in the future when everything is grey and we wonder how everything went astray, embrace of communism disguised as “yes we can [change],” too bad no one realized the treachery in that phrase, and, oh yeah, that “we” was all a deceit, there’s no “I” in team, there’s no “we” in “I” and the “I” certainly doesn’t give a fuck about the “we” anyway, not that I blame the “I”, cause neither would I, if I were the “I” currently making all the important, long-lasting societal decisions for the “we”, causing a ruckus, trying to fuck with us, but I suppose I would also not endeavor for the fame, play it like a game, something that allows me to feel the same, as all the other “firsts” in the history of America, because my narcissism has a limit, I won’t cause a schism, between right and left, up and down, the barrage of scrutiny that will abound, coming from the coming years, the fears associated with the likely transition, a mission, the fateful conversion from freedom and liberty to utter, soul-crushing dystopia. Ah America, we had a nice run.




“The dope fiend and the artist have lots in common.” --– Bull Gaines

TWENTY-SEVEN IS FOR ROCK STARS, bars, useless disregard, heroin is a rock star murder weapon, vicious as them all, the last lesson, things can feel good and be bad and vice versa, I’m not one to learn them, a maverick, a cavalier asshole, the charmer, disarmer, the one to desert them, I don’t care about dereliction, life is for the living, too many drugs lead to rock star demises, what comprises the better, best life, not strife, not useless disregard, it’s the wrong way, say I want to know the right way, the way that makes me proud, loud, willing to cry out, this is the age, the rage, that counts the most, this is where the madness matters, rattles the bones, shakes the souls, makes a difference, a mark, in a world where too many marks have already been made, enraged, why can’t my life matter while I’m alive, thriving, surviving, why must art matter only when I’m dead, no longer ahead, sleeping forever in a hard, wooden bed? I hate twenty-seven because it’s unreal, almost gone, totally wrong, out of the kid zone, into adulthood, and yet still such an unmistakable asshole, unfulfilled, sleeping awake in a godforsaken place just trying to make it, unable to fake it for a lifetime, the price you pay for living in modernity, lacking sincerity, they hate me too much to revere me. Twenty-seven is for rock star demises, it’s priceless, the things we do when we are young, mid twenties, save me, I can’t even fathom what it might be like to be thirty, unworthy, the last of a great legacy, put a pin in it, ignore it, disobserve it, I’m over it, let’s just get on to the next topic.



WE ZOOMED EAST ON THE 10 FROM EL PASO TO AUSTIN, THROUGH WASTELAND WEST TEXAS, it was July 3rd and ah summer was just beginning in the year, best year, best number 09, yes and only because I like the number so much and I was younger then and had lots of naïve thoughts in front of me, ideologies of winning, no one could stop me, it was the truth, ah youth, such crazy indignities early twenties, and I had yet to meet the guy who would fulfill bucket list items, but more of that later, and really though I should mention here that we were on our way to Austin by way of San Antonio, only because Tegan had to visit her boyfriend on the base first, and then shoot up to Austin to visit my high school friend who dug Texas since we were kids, cowboys, farmland, Republicanism, she dug it all, liked the dirt, the sand, bigskycountryland and since I had never been to that great southern state, I thought I should, even though I knew I’d be a misfit, outlaw, misunderstood. We were granted entrance into the base after a certain amount of hassle, them trying to decide if we were there to mess with someone, they checked our IDs, mine from Cali and Tegan’s from Arizony at that point, nevertheless, goddamn I digress, they let us in and it wasn’t the first time that day we were asked to show identification, at the last station, some kind of weigh station in the middle of wasteland West Texas that also I think may have doubled as a border checkpoint of some variety, they were clearly looking for illegal trafficking, and we were eventually let in, made to pass, such a strange act, out in the middle of nowhere they stood, somewhere on the 10 between El Paso and Austin, perhaps Fort Stockton, we didn’t pay enough attention, and we were off again. Also somewhere on that drive, we passed a place called Ozona, Texas, a place where I was transfixed, mostly because I could not imagine living somewhere so desolate, so unimpressive, population under two thousand, and the only place to eat was a Sonic, and not that I am particularly complaining, I happen to like Sonic dining, but Tegan and I were definitely not planning on sticking around longer than it took to order and eat a burrito, back on the road, east 10 freeway, on the way, to San Antonio.

So we stopped, waited for her man to come downstairs, sat at tables and watched smokers, smoke nicotine refuse and stub on wooden table tops, I’m digging the area but it’s too hot, beginning of July and not dry, not even close to desert atmosphere, humidity ruining it all, so we head back West 10, to Austin, actually I think it was East 35, arrive in San Marcos, makes me laugh, thinking about San Marcos, California, and then oh yeah, middle school crush used to live there years ago, and I make Tegan stop at a head shop, called Planet K, she says OK, and we check things out, and it’s all dark and weird in there, normal head shop demeanor, and I buy a pipe, a glass one that is disassembled, and immediately begin to wonder how will I get it back on the plane to California, and the guy at the register, a weird looking fella, G.H. type, is trying to get Tegan and me to buy this strange purple drink, something he claims will make us high, and I am of course interested, but I am also skeptical, this being a radical new thing I’ve never heard of, so we eventually decline and rush out of the store and all the way to Austin, meeting my good friend at her condo near Lake Travis, which is actually north of Austin, Texas, and still somewhat west as well but by now Tegan is driving and I’m not paying much attention, and I’m amazed by the vastness of Austin, such a crazy spread out city, already trying to mess with me, so far to the local grocery, it’s far too vast for me, but her place is really amazing, nice view and scenery. So we stay a few nights, Fourth of July in Austin, might be better than Boston, at least we get to throw our own fireworks, not corralled by the police force, of course them planning for another terrorist attack on Boston, doesn’t happen in Austin, too spread out to mess with, this is Texas, and really Boston didn’t offer much more than police force prejudice, and a long walk through Compton version of South Boston, the projects, while my friend noted, all the things we were missing, on the docks half mile away, fireworks were not late, so we missed the first half. That year in Austin, Texas we threw off our own fireworks and there was a mad scene, us believing in anything and everything, just going wild, Texas was made for nihilistic activities, a prophesy, what was never meant for me, football the next day, whoa Reggie, here we go, a running back show, and this was kind of before I had the opportunity to get big into football, but we got our fill, back lights, night life football, let’s go!

Then on to San Antonio, again, a show down there of blue and green lights, overnight, freeway underpass unnaturally bright, the blue, green, orange, red lights, show on the way back to motel in San Antonio, riverwalk enlightening talk, where I first figured out trajectory of the secret story of Tegan and her then boyfriend, on the mend, they made it past the outspoken, misbegotten trials and tribulations of early love, I wondered how they had gotten together in the first place, asked point blank, got the run around, story so old, it told enough from circumstance, I understood it all with looks and gestures, ugh. Let’s go, on the road, I had really wanted to see the hype of Southwestern United States, zoom up Texas West to Roswell, New Mexico, by way of Carlsbad, comment on the name, it’s the same as waterside San Diego, waterslide New Mexico shame of those who ride slippery slides in broad daylight in early summer Carlsbad, New Mexico, I’m ashamed for them, ashamed of them, and yet we zoom on, find Roswell by dark, find sad little motel near UFO Museum, think we’ll check it out, see what it’s all about, some kind of tourist attraction, the only action in this smaller than I imagined town of such notorious reputation, is this it for dedication, they seem so close to starvation, how did we land in this civilization, how did Roswell come to this desolation, there is only one main road for exploration. So ah! afterward, after alien unmentionable farce, we go on up to Taos, New Mexico, check out the Indian caves, all the crazy, mad art in their pitiful little small enclaves, the ladders and steep shattering rocks along the pockets of their very existence, they laid it all out for us, to make a life worthy of something, worthy of touting, they wanted to tout, they wanted something fierce, something prideful, just like the rest of us, mournful, soulful, this is our meaningful moment, we were meant for it, or something resembling it, and that feeling alone is what I’m thinking or thought as I scaled a ladder and rummaged around one of their secret little caves, maybe this clarity will someday save, maybe me maybe not, but I’m glad for the opportunity to check out the space, pace this, walking around this seemingly endless cavernous desert oasis, seeing deer without any fear near caves that belonged once to honorable tribes back in the day. What ever happened to them?

Never found out, crushed aviator sunglasses by accident, rushed off next to Albuquerque New Mexico, and there they had a nice little Mexican style restaurant, best food I can’t remember, dear simple back room table, and I, I ate some kind of staple, like rice and tortillas and perhaps some protein, and this was after Santa Fe, a city I dug by the way, because it seemed just so absolutely delightful, insightful, if I had my way, I might have stayed, ah Santa Fe, a true artist’s sanctuary, and I can’t even remember all the cool things it had to offer, but it was so pleasant, iridescent, and I could kind of picture myself as a resident, amazement, I bet there would be a bunch of inspiration.

After food in Albuquerque, digging the use of two ‘Qs’ in one word, we headed west, sped fast to make the Arizona border by breakfast, we made it earlier, 1 am, and I was driving really fast, trying to last, speeding impatient and insatiable, almost hit a wolf, standing in the fast lane of the highway, about to be maimed, but he lazily, unhurriedly, walked back, missing him by luck, the collision would have fucked up the white Jetta beyond recognition, I can’t even imagine, all the stuff that would have happened, if we hit that wolf/coyote/fox, it was dark, I really have no idea what it might have been, but it survived and so did we! On through the rock piles, piles of rock on either side of us, speeding past, going fast, memories of old desert movies, something so masterful it was crazy, just speeding west going eighty, trying to make it, the border and something more, planning to traverse Arizona at some point, but stopped in Winslow for the night, 2 am and afraid to go on, small two story no-tell motel in the middle of nowhere, night nowhere, pull into parking lot aware, it’s all ghastly and didn’t want to draw attention, did I mention, this is notown, Arizona off the beaten path, only the Eagles have written about this town, standin’ on the corner park, I stood there, no big deal, I’ve had better, and really it was just on the whim of my sister’s then boyfriend, to check out Winslow, Arizona and I allowed, wanted to sleep and rest anyhow, so we hit up a tourist shop after the mandatory shot of us all standing on the corner next to the spot that got all the publicity, notoriety, after the Eagles came out with some kind of song called ‘Take it Easy’ and I never even heard it play, I was never into the seventies, liked the nineties and only because grunge bands were heavy and their lyrics were magic and hit the vein, more than the seventies, Cobain and Rossdale, they knew how to share, the best lyrics and music of the era, fuck the early century, the nineties had it all, a shame Kurt took a fall, and all the other fucked up stuff that occurred before I even heard Nirvana or Bush, way after their birth, busy with worthless other endeavors, like breaking my pinky finger, in a game of one-on-one basketball in 8th grade gym class, right before a dance, didn’t have the chance to seek medical opinion. Oh where was I? Winslow, Arizona, and I couldn’t dig it properly, because I never listened to the Eagles and got hooked naturally, they never occurred to me, were never shown to me. On west, to Phoenix, where I might catch my plane back to Cali, the shallow wants and needs of a narcissist still in training, refraining, from being just a little stupid jerk, an ungrateful shit, waiting with eyes closed, I hit the pipe surreptitiously, unimpressively, digressively, just ah, waiting, waiting, waiting for the next thrill, maybe they will take me back to Phoenix via Sedona, nice hills, great rock formations, desert south of civilization, Flagstaff thunderstorms ignored Sedona ready to impress me fully.

And we hit Sedona by noon, I played their worst intentions against them, convinced them, oh this is a good idea, the best idea, let’s stop and have some kind of rest, it’s the best for us, driving straight through from Winslow, and now not terribly outside of Phoenix, down the seventeen toward Tonto National Springs, this is the thing we never considered wandering south, there’s more to the road than being showed all the stuff that makes a place great, discover it your own way, the rock patterns were sensational, irreproachable, this is the last record, of sometime July near 2009, down to Phoenix from above, right to make the move south, straight to the weird converted couch, of somewhere USA, next day, I caught a plane back to Californay, just kidding, only about the characterization of a state still so riddled with tension, it would probably want me to mention, this is the best place for residence, somewhere near Encinitas, the best place for us, coastal ambivalence, this is where they embrace us, satiate us, condone us, has pride for us, isn’t this then the place we need to exist?



I THINK OF ONE GUY SOMEHOW WHEN I GO OUT, when I meet other guys, comparisons are tired but true, I think of him not because he was perfect or even close to what I want, assuming of course I actually knew what I want, but because I have never met another guy that was so much like me in so many ways, so similar, and I kept thinking about that saying, maxim, axiom, ‘opposites attract’ and maybe it colored our budding relationship, I don’t know, he was just like me, apathy, indifference, we grew apart because neither one of us ever wanted to reach out, make an effort, married to our individual yet same tired routines, work, smoke, drink, drugs, wee, wee, wee, and he wrote too, just like me, but I’m not sure he used the substances like me, to write, insight, but he liked to play, feel good, who doesn’t, yay! Yet still makes for a fill, too many kicks to go out and meet up with someone new, even for sex, too lazy, the both of us, both wanting to be adored, picked up, brought to drinking, smoking, drugging location, then brought back again, to bed, sex, then separate ways, so similar it’s scary, our play, too many miles between us to make it ordinary, regular, so we separated, and yet I wonder about him, does he wonder about me? Probably not, too many other women to fill his mind, all his lines, tall, tall, tall and muscular, women drawn to his allure, but like me he runs, far away, his lines betray, he has a sense but he’ll stray, like me, no one to trust, in it for the lust, caring not about feelings, emotions, sincerities, ah me, he’s just like me, we need counterparts, opposite and engaging, caring and insinuating, genuine sincerity, love, rise above, counterparts who will accept, despite our defects, our inevitable standoffishness, our selfishness, our pride, our egos, our need for aloneness, we want the world, we want everything and nothing, a mate who doesn’t complain, but supports our indignation, our obsession with greatness, striving to be something, someone, and of course they must be hot, and accepting, doting and adoring, obviously fawning, but reliant enough on their own, amuse themselves, independent, separate life, and willing to look the other way on indiscretions, someone so captivated yet strong, there through thick and thin, a sense to belong, intelligent and diverse, gives the universe, the perfect compliant mate, who will wait, and love us for who we are. We need our opposites.



WE’RE UP IN LA AND I’M TWENTY-SIX and getting my law license, what a thrill, it’s chill, hit the connection earlier, get high in the car while my parents check out the campus, oohing and awing at UCLA and its structural, architectural marvels, it’s my rival school, it’s cool, we embarrass them every year, we own thiSCity, correct. They walk around and check things out, and all the while my dad wears his ‘USC’ shirt in UCLA-land, haha, and I catch up with them blurry-eyed, no eyedrops, oh well, just tripping and skipping and pointing out mad inconsistencies and denigrating this school for obvious purposes, thinking I’m hilarious once again, and only because I have fallen into the same routine that still doesn’t feel like a routine, but it will soon. And really we are just waiting around to hit up my old bosses in Westwood, where I used to work when I was twenty-two, and see how time has passed and shoot the shit for an afternoon before zooming down the 405 to get ordained, or inducted in hall of fame, state bar of California, wee, now everybody has to call me counselor, fuck you Debbie. My bosses are really cool men, super nice, super chill, just talking, talking, talking, good times, I introduce them to my parents because they never met and they argue about politics with my dad, good-natured, and he tries to pull his punches because he knows how to act with non-Republicans, and really my one boss agrees with everything he says and that starts a fight between the other two and I laugh recalling old times, when the two of them would use the speaker phones to shout back and forth between their offices about Bush and whether he was mostly good or mostly evil, and my dad of course was on his side, supporting Bush, president not band, aw, too bad, still my father Dan, lifelong RepubliCAN, haha oh man, and well ah, so then my mom is just nodding at them courteously and looking out the window mesmerizingly, just trying to see if she can see USC from Century City, and then she identifies downtown, The Met, where I used to live, and I confirm. Oh LA, you were once my playGround.

Soon we rush off, bidding farewells, zoom to the County of Orange where I, along with a certain percentage of my graduating class will take an oath and become attorneys, wee, ah me, that bar exam was really, truly just made for me! I’m such a cavalier fucking asshole, but say, I never play the grand delinquent with grandiose delusions of grandeur out loud, to people, real people, I keep it subtle, inside, a stride and of course I let it captivate my life but only insofar as the delusions can be believed, weaved into some kind of social outer shell when I’m around people who naturally, fluidly, sanctimoniously, view me as the loser, a loser, falling far from once proven stated potential, whatever, I’ve never been very bright at living right, it’s too mundane, maybe a shame, but I don’t see it that way quite yet.

And when we get down there to Orange County City of Orange, 405 exit called Torrance, no! called Fountain Valley, no! called, well it’s on the 5 actually and it’s called Orangewood, that’s right, leads past a jail and past Disneyland, what a world, and right to law school campus, and the lovely lampposts spoken of earlier, towering on every corner, now remembering 5 North to 55 East to Chapman Ave, I never had any clue how fast three years could fly by, and now coming back, it’s similar yet different, and the lampposts remind me of all that passing time, time I can’t negotiate, there’s no god to mediate, and even at twenty-six, I was transfixed, look at all the shit I’ll never experience, walking bored from class with buddy side to side along the street, beat, the lampposts once more, I recognize them and call them out, them signifying little protected community of law school California, and remembering me as student with friends getting drunk but not telling, memories of youthful dillydallying, flash, bang, and now I see acquaintances I knew from back in the day and they say things like ‘oh wow, you look different!’ and by this time I should mention actually that my hair is much shorter and people can hardly recognize me at first, but it works, mostly because I really like to live in anonymity anyway, it’s a play, I hate the way everyone wants to network, it’s absurd, friend me on LinkedIn, nah thanks, I’m good, not interested in being cool or hip or linked in, I’d rather be the one they wonder about, she’s not on Facebook, perhaps she’s dead, haha, that’s all well, fine and good.

So anyway, I digress, such chaos, I’ve never been one to wring in the tangents successfully, but anyway at this point in the story I lead my parents to the lobby where there are drinks, drinks, drinks, but they don’t care and I dig that about them, so we rush off after not much chit-chat, down the sidewalk and across the street to the undergraduate auditorium area where we had one lecture one time, I could barely find, and when I did I sat in the back corner and the professor narrowed his eyes at me as some kind of irreverent kid and I just sat there and eyed the hot guy two rows down and six seats over because we were fucking at the time on the down-low cause he had a serious girlfriend which of course to me made him more attractive because he wouldn’t be bothering me to hang out every goddamn day of the week, and ah again I digress but there is purpose because we were rushing off to the same auditorium, this time to hear some boring speeches and finally to get me ordained, pained, take the oath of the attorney. Just like goddamn graduation again, except for all that terribly unnerving shit with the stalker I had, more about that later, and at that time I had my buddies on either side, same order, unplanned, and we became attorneys one after the other, just like we studied, just like we bar examed, just like we made it.

So then that was done and we decided to go out and get food, ah celebration, attorneys in Californication, Zitos Pizza like we used to do back in the day, the day when things were easy, before the robbery, the theft of all my dollars by banks, the ranks, all them taking, the suits just thinking it’s not stealing, not from kids, 22, 18, wanting to go to college, graduate school, whatever, wanting the chance to be like everyone else, the way to make it, cutting their teeth, making their nut, the quintessential right road to adulthood, crossroads, college like some kind of coming of age obligatory right thing, almost a requirement, them happy to stick their hooks into our flesh, bleeding for innocence, raping our ignorance, perfect mix of unequal bargaining power, unconscionable, unsanctionable except when the courts, the judges are all butt-buddies with the banks, oh bankruptcy never sounded so sweet, too bad it’s only for the delinquents, true losers, biting off more than they can chew, not for us, not for students, our debts are exempt, and I’m off now on another rant.

Oh but anyway, that’s right, Pizza was good, my dad got along with my buddy’s boyfriend Buddy quite well, good times, I think there was football on the screen, something to lean on, we all love football, we are American, football is innate, inherent and I can’t say enough about how we cherish our teams, my Jets and my Trojans, and my fantasy teams, my Luxers (FitinShilohs) and my Silver Martens, two different leagues and yet the same fantasy, one conquest, the pennant, the first place score, but it’s a bore, some kind of cultural thing, and I’m unsure of so many things. We took off and this was something I thought thereafter, my mother and my father, they must just have been so thrilled that I wasn’t one of the leftovers with nothing to offer. I made it, at least to a certain extent, beyond the obligatory, cut your teeth, college coming of age experience; I ran three years beyond and hit the finish line and then a few days ago, perhaps yesterday I found out that I moved up in ranks, four of us total, and I zoomed up from the dumbest child (undisputed concession) to the smartest child (wee!), and this was pretty awesome because I’m also the tallest child, just hitting all the finish lines in stride, bang!



WE SKIPPED DOWN WASHINGTON STREET, or was it Province Street, Starbucks on the right, water and a vanilla latte, heading for where State meets Congress, the Old State House where they read the Declaration of Independence every year on the Fourth, read ahead, sharply at ten, read by some pothead, or some reinactor of history, what a misery, I knew it would be long, walking past all the dying lawns, on Washington or Province Street, beat already at 8:30 in the morning, only because of drinking the night before out on state route what was it 94, no 90! and having been driven there by a designated driver I couldn’t know, not with any clarity, and pity me, because I digress again, out of starbucks, ice coffee in hand, the 95 degree weather, I never imagined such heat at 8:30, ah humidity, why me, covered my head with a beanie, getting looks of perfect ambiguity, Bostonians always wonder why Californians wear such perfectly incomparable outer wear, well because, I want my hair to look presentable, and humidity has a terrible reputation for, being abhorrent when it comes to hair, therefore, ah well, it was absolutely requirable, and I’ll make no apologies for, my headwear, haha. And actually my companions were striding alongside, and they did not deride, not like the dumbass, massholes we came by, because they know me and my ways, and I’ll claim, it’s perfectly warranted. Coffee in hands, we took a spot near stairs and railings, back spot but still enough to see, no trees, wee! and there was mad police presence, due in fact to Boston Marathon-related tenseness, and supposedly, properly, there was some kind of police awareness that it had meant to be, really, July Fourth, Fourth of July, not marathon day, so my friend, ah, oh man, she, well she was on the lookout, for things about, terrorist fools trying to spoof Boston Police, please, they are well manned, undercover and cover, doesn’t stop my friend from trying to discover, any and all out of place, black backpack and scowl in place, then disappearing without a trace, we didn’t hear the end of it until lunch, rather brunch, drinking wine at 11:30, only in this city, and only on vacation. And now, sitting here writing, struggling for tired rhymes, makes me think of page 259, and how he predicted terrorism tricks sixty years before his time, before nine eleven, how did he manage, how was he so clever, I could never formulate true prophesies about the world, mankind, I’m not that intuitive, I’m too blind, too unobservant and uncaring, unfeeling, selfish, I’m the bad fish, just using substance to come up with nonsense I pass off as amazingness, to feel like I can have some kind of imagined greatness.



DOWNTOWN LA HAS CHANGED ME, changed my character, and in five years I no longer recognize its exterior, such a foreign place, unforgiving space, my old haunts all gone, or transformed into something wrong, what a loss, these old rundown, dive bar places, these condemned, dilapidated spaces, all hyped now, redone, worked over, charging cover and serving watered down drinks, swill, I can’t believe it, all the places I haunted in my young young youth, drinking, smoking, carrying on, all gone, the beat rundown, old bars under dilapidated apartment buildings, used to have character, used to have charm, all forever gone, places we lost, undergone gentrification, hipsterification, all of the gross, disgusting results of increased population, and so I’ve grown to hate them, on a visceral level because there are too many people infesting the area, unlike before, before when it was more of a neighborhood, you might have gotten stabbed and/or robbed in the great night street Skid Row so close, but at least you didn’t have dressed up rich transsexual pre-surgeries asking you to donate to their cause, clipboard in hand, making demands, eyebrows perfectly plucked, fingernails manicured, hair expertly mussed, no, you didn’t have those folks, not back then, they were too scared to come into big bad downtown at night, it was just right, the place I called home, back then when it had character and a backbone, the only people approaching you wanting money, drugs and booze, wise to their ruse, less of a burden than now.

I used to dream of Orpheum theater, the strange old relic from neon days, my dream world conjuring up the inside extravagant because I’ve never been inside, not once, after years of living so close, the sign bright yellow and engaging, running, thrilling out my bedroom window, orange, yellow, orange, yellow, fifteen stories up, more clever, more alluring than the ‘Jesus Saves’ sign nearby, an ignorant eyesore, a bore, doesn’t anyone think anymore? Orpheum is there and Jesus is gone, relegated to the past where he belongs, with George Washington and Constantine, historical figures lived and died, not mythological at all, Orpheum, that theater at Broadway and 7th with the neon sign calling out to me, here I am, do you know what I am? I once saw some rats running across the alleyway nearby, oh Orpheum, you elude me, you mesmerize me, you intrigue me, you were never about me, but I liked you anyway.



DRAMA UNFOLDS OUTSIDE IN THE COLD, COLD BLUE WATER WHILE DAD WATCHES WOLF SHOWS IN THE GARAGE, strange little tales about black wolves in outback Siberia, talking about asshole punks who kill wolves in the snow out there, when just yesterday or the day before he was talking about how he would love to kill all the coyotes around here with a shotgun he doesn’t have, all the coyotes that feed in the area, ayoo, making bones of soft, tuxedo toned cats, his favorite cat, named Murphy, ah no, named Roscoe, he wants to kill coyotes but wolf killers are punkish assholes with no regard, how is that so, how can that be so? The line is cowardice apparently, and coyotes have it while wolves do not, go figure, that’s a thin tiny line if you ask me, they both look like wild dogs in the light of day, and the dark, I don’t get along and wouldn’t get along with either one if accosted in middle alleyway or dark throughway, or dirt track off the beaten path, and it makes no difference anyway because I hate to view death, in any capacity and for any reason, just hate to see it, so it matters not if it’s a deaf rodent or a magnanimous lion, death should be preserved for natural causes, when bodies give out, not before, not in the prime of time, by wolves, coyotes, or clandestine rapists, I hate hearing of it, speaking of it, reading of it, seeing it, all of it. The light gives way to dark slowly, this a few days later, Labor Day, light giving away, over beers and fears and tales of big bear, of broken tail lights, delusions of grandeur, only mine or at least partly mine, reminiscing, discussing stories of the past, we all look back, we can’t help to recount, all the tales we feel make us grand, make us storytellers, write it down, make it sound, the self-important, grandiose tales of our mediocre lives, made great by our retellings, by our boastful dignities, by something definable, tangible, rather indefinable and intangible, my curse, the worst possible thing, such a way with words and dreading the action that forms the stories for the words, without being heard, ah me, I live to write, I write to live, I eat to live, I do not live to eat, these are the things that make us great, the things I must do, go out and be part of the world so grand, to transform average stories into passionate discourses, follow the forces, the instincts, blink and the words are forgotten because in the course of this living, I forgot somehow to write them all down.



I RAN LIKE HELL UP A HILL to catch a careening, beaming, slowly ascending convertible automobile driven by a friend of mine at the time, a crazy, wild, depressed girl, Mormon by religion, uncertain with everything, not buying into anything, bad Mormon girl who watched rated R movies, drank Smirnoff ice, shot caffeine, sliced veins, weird, entertaining, sad, troubled girl, friend of mine in high school, grade nine, this was in 2002 or 2004, I’m not sure anymore, but she was looking for a fill, trying to rebel, and I, being somewhat of an admitted bad influence in those days, played into that drive selfishly, to have my fun, to get some kicks, being an atheist in a world of Christian paranoid nutcases, but what about hell, they wanted to know, fuck them all, life is for living, so me with my adamant stance, conniving and convincing my friend to steal cars, break alarms, do harm, this was all part of my charm, way back when, then, when I was fifteen or sixteen, with parents who would let me, do anything I wanted on most nights, as long as grades were in the nineties, easy, high school thirty year old teachers with crushes on me, or actually on her really, friend of mine, Mormon by religion, crushes that she excited in him, made him wonder what if, apparently teasing was enough, he allowed us to really get away with some awful shit, ditching class, being crass, me more than her because I knew how to pass. Ah high school days, high school daze, high school craze, what a maze, expected to bite on, fight on, stupid little pitiful cheese, please, we were smarter than the ones poised to teach. Nevertheless, trucked along, mucked abound, fucked around, at least for awhile, pulling stupid little PG pranks, not robbing banks, toilet paper and egging mostly, boy friends playing dungeons and dragons pitifully in Loma Serenas communities, them being none the wiser while we crept up slowly, painting the garden white, the trees white, the house white, the grass yellow, made so by an inopportune squatting piss from another Mormon priss, this one sanctimonious, and really just unkind, kind of blind, good friend of mine but I recognized her faults, the one who really bought into religion without thought, rebelling so minorly, it could barely be thought of as such, what unluck, to be born in a broken Mormon home, ah it must have sucked! The events leading up to the decision are hidden, can’t remember them, but I think crazy, sad, Mormon girl, my good friend, the one who rebelled with legitimate prowess, unremarkable by name but only in so much as I haven’t ever heard it before, she decided to steal a car, her sister’s car, but it was a mile away and up a hill, so another friend of mine, one that remains to this day a friend, imagine that, a great friend in fact, she ran along with the sad Mormon girl looking for thrills, up the hill, they ran that mile, while we stayed back, smoked some alcohol, drank some bud, waited with bated breaths, to see if they could make it, they did, picked us up, oh man, must have been seven or eight of us, all crammed into tiny, white convertible automobile, driving along Bear Valley, the main road, high school rivalry, past freeway, to tucked away stupid, little community, Lomas Serenas, or something to that affect, what a mess, first left, parked up the hill for easy escape, but left me for bait, once finished with the rape, the house completely trashed, once toilet paper was flung and flied, once urine was laid and dried, on fresh green grass, once it came time to leave, one of us had to ring the doorbell, alert the boys inside, to what had been done, apparently that was me, I was designated, I remember it was fine, I waited by the line, for the rest of them to jump in the car, then I snuck up to the doorbell, about to ring when, oh fuck, they walked up, opened the door and greeted me, me with my too long hair in my face, I had to race, me with out any shoes, sandals left in the car, me without any recourse, running made it worse, but nevertheless I turned, ran, bolted, feet pounding pavement, down the driveway, up the street, shouting, GO, GO, GO, as they chased, gave pursuit, I heard someone yell, “their still here!” and me, running for my life, strife, ignored the incorrect usage of the three-pronged word, it should be ‘they’re,’ a contraction, but more than grammar correction, I just wanted to make my extraction, the jump into the backseat contraption, where sad, rebellious little Mormon girl was driving, striving, pounding the gas, up the hill, while I ran after, laughter, saying, “C’Mon Lux, Make It!” Finally I did, ran, jumped, zoomed, yes, into the back seat, neat, feet beat, shins scraped, relief setting in, boys running after, the laughter, out of breath, she turned left, up the hill, big circle, and back to Bear Valley, which was now Via Rancho Parkway, safe. Ah, good old days, high school blaze, driving, driving, driving around, trying to beat the daze, inspired by lazy, uninspired learning, churning for excitement, enlightenment, anything we could set our sights on, those days so reminiscent, magnificent, decade ago and still terrific, we wanted to make something of our time, always knew the right things to say and do, to prove, show how we would get along, weren’t wrong, couldn’t be, we got along, free and clear, maybe not her, maybe not all of them, at least some of them, at least me, attorney, now I’m free. Wee!



JUSTIN STOOD ON THE STEPS OF THE NORTHEAST CORNER OF UNIVERSITY, pretending to be, or really being nonchalant, hands in pockets, wearing striped, horizontal shirt, pulling it off, the kind of guy I would equivocate with an early crush of mine, the type of guy who skates and surfs, so California it hurts, the type of good-looking guy who just wants to fuck and fly, the kind of guy who just digs, observes the things around him, saying nothing, hands in his pockets, looking around, thinking this place is only alright, the night, glamorous and unparalleled, at least for border towns, but he has no interest because he doesn’t roll anymore, not drinking or drugs, can’t take the chance, too much to lose, like Tommy, just playing it safe and knowing all of the strife, I can’t for the life of me give up the best of me, the substances that could, potentially, in a skewed, shifted world of my making, make me great, a corraller of the madness, the greatness, the amazement, to emblaze a new path toward tempered, anxious enlightenment, the frenzied wild path that leads to reverie and astonishment, I can’t give it all up. Of course I have different, adamant words of retort, at 3 in the morning when I have awoken short of the day, daybreak, sun far from rising, sunbeams long from shining, down upon me and giving me that feeling of utter capability, of promise, of some kind of feeling that I might casually qualify or quantify as hope, the rope far from set around my neck, a noose still somewhat loose, still waiting to see what the day brings, will the birds sing, smell of coffee, humid lack of breeze, ah me, will I ever capture morning just right? Justin has the right idea, so does Alyssa, and Ron, the ones who carry on, fit the paradigm, embrace the race, society’s calling, falling, I have no idea why I am stalling, except to say, I really don’t want any of that; I would so much rather, embrace the chaos, shatter, paradigms unimpressive, to find something better, at least better suited to me, for me, to be free, not restricted, constricted by things I’ve been told to want, things to trap me in a box, an ordinary, regular, normal box, entrapment in the most devastating sense of the word, I won’t be lured, can’t be lured, into some kind of devastating, bitter insistence, resistance, this is why we are in this, to finish this, to make it, to be more than we were meant for, break paradigms, throw out thoughtless rhymes, all the while we drink, drink, drink, shoot, shoot, shoot, snort, snort, snort, smoke, smoke, smoke, anything that will have us, the ambiguous place in space, in society, that still hasn’t figured out how to capture us, the rooks, on the outer edge, me and all my bitterness, them and all their resentfulness, bracing for another kind of nominal victory in a world unmeant for me, unmeant for us, lost generation getting left behind, I’m the nowhere kid who this month digs rhymes.



USC WINS AGAIN, TWO YEARS IN A ROW, this is how legacies are made, they are won, two years straight, wait, how could others relate to the adrenaline, pure excitement, wow, mad rushes around, slapping hands, this is how we band together, over teams, universities, yay diversities, and our defense today was so impressive, so unrelenting and aggressive, saved our offense, our head coach, a joke, fighting with zebras on the sidelines, give me a break, how much does it take to realize futility in fighting, biting, berating, sheep in zebra clothing, knowing they can throw the game, will throw the game, enough of the same, we won anyway, yay! Truth of the matter, it was sadder to see how bad the Cardinal played, giving up opportunities to get paid, score points, anoint, get in with the in crowd, north PAC-12, disregard, I hate Oregon but Stanford more, they bore, academics aren’t sexy, alumni are messy, unkempt, unimpressive, and here’s to the rest of the year, and them sucking. In the style of Jack praising Cody I will say that I was super impressed with Leonard, Pullard, and Craven, they were the highlights of our defense, stepped up, made something, had a terrific game despite the lacking, scholarships gone until next June, no problem if we keep in tune, keep it up, our great, stand-up defense, the hero, beat the Trees, on their streets, to become two and zero, yes here’s to the defense! Fight on!



THE BLUE GREEN ORANGE BLACK never looked so dark, it’s going to attack, so angry and resilient it seems, signaling the hopelessness I never wanted to see, perceive, another degree, a day, shifting away, turning so swift, time moving on, eternity, something I will never see, the endlessness of day after day, and somehow I think I would be content, to live forever in mesmerizement, at least twenty-six, the golden age, when rage meant more, when emotions were torn, when I felt like a real person, not worn out by struggle, trying to make it in a world that just wants to kill me, thrill me, I can’t remember simplicity, not anymore, back when I was young and dumb, when hanging out was fun, having people over to swim, on a whim, best song to fuck to, these are the things I relate to, I guess I should say, I’m sorry that I’m this way, but I have no interest in feigning, berating, straining, the blue green and orange turns to black, the stars are back, so bright and so brilliant, almost resilient, and yet, when white turns to black I know, soon, the world will shift, twitch, and the sun will rise and itch, a new day will dawn, sun beams on the lawn, and it will feel hopeful again, a new blend of hopefulness and progeny, before it will lodge against me, a new slew of complaints, the morning sun twitching to late noon, too soon, so late, and I will feel forgotten, misbegotten, the perfect prodigy of an empty legacy, unfulfilled once again, because no one cares about the pen, the ability to write, there’s no regard for sight, ability to fight convention, did I mention, I’m an attorney without an interest in aggression, this might be dissension. I lost the ability to write tonight even though I came out here with light, it’s gone away, the sun has long set, beer has long gone, and I’m carrying on for practically no reason, the pitiful tiny solar lights unseasoned, the atmosphere dry and unrelenting, bugs still trying, sucking all the light, computer screen teasing, blank white page bleeding, words, words, words strange and pleading, and me still dreading the next day where I wake up and feel hope, the kind that dissipates as the clock winds, is this my life, how come I can barely see the water glide across the waxing moonlight, what a sight! This is the tonight, the ninth, my favorite number.



ON THE ROAD to Baltimore from Penn Station, West 34th, Big Apple, Manhattan! drinking wine out of a brown bag, wine that I got from the five and dime, no, the drugstore, no, bevmo? No, it was from a wine shop off Bowery, I forget, big long street that cuts down to the Lower East Side, the one place I never really went, or maybe I did in the middle of the night, drunk, drunk, drunk from East Village old, old, oldest bar in America, because somehow I recall we did end up in Williamsburg later that night although we must have taken the subway line closer to Stuyvesant only because it really felt like we were walking north and I only mention it now, as a tangent of course, because Bowery made me think of a different nighttime New York and my brain twitched and spiked, oh must talk of other time after drinking wine on bus to Baltimore! The sign in the bus said no alcohol, it was emphatic, large CAPSLOCK letters, and I, because I’m such an irreverent, incandescent scumbag of course ignored the sign and drank the wine so that I could write about things that were occurring while my companion slept snoring, it was raining and really I just wrote about boring, tedious, almost unbelievable, ridiculous things that I later deleted because they made no sense, wine-soaked nonsense, thinking maybe about transSiberian railroad crossing, what an adventure it would be, wasteland Russia, yay! And the people on the bus, they knew what I was up to, the brown bag a telltale sign, consumption of narcotics, intoxicants, giving me evil looks, narrowed eyes, prying, trying to be sanctimonious, but when I looked up from my keyboard and I wordlessly challenged them to say something, they refrained, said nothing of course, no one has guts, gusto anymore, all such a bore, sit there and take it, so I just shrugged and continued to fake it. This was on the road to Baltimore.

Months later, a different year but not the span of 365 days, I was back in NY, rushing around and seeing the sights, took a second ride down south, flying the east coast, another bus, this time to Jersey to see a friend of mine, residing in the Garden State, should be called the nuclear power plant state but I suppose that doesn’t roll off the tongue nearly as well, and anyway what a pity that would be having those words and connotations inscribed along a license plate, indicating one’s roots, and anyway, I with my forehead resting alongside the window, looking out toward the west, a different kind of wasteland, still with hasty rivers and lakes and mud, ah Jersey! and seeing the remnants of Sandy out my window, almost a year thereafter, wow, power lines down, buried in sand, what did you do to Jersey, Sandy? I was incredulous I believe, mostly because I couldn’t imagine the damage so extensive, that almost a year later it would be still present, sand covered utility poles, it really took a toll on the eastern coast, amazing what weather patterns can do, coming down from Greenland, the Jet Stream, mixing with a hurricane, what a shame, devastation of an ecosystem, no more Jersey shore. There isn’t much but dilapidated housing projects between New York City and Orange, I dug it all but there wasn’t much, I waited it out in order to check out suburban Orange, Seaton Hall, New Jersey, I had never been. Dang Sandy, what have you done?



HE TOLD ME THIS IS WHEN HIS DAD DIED, but he was wrong, his dad died in June and this is September, so I wondered what he meant, standing there in the elevator, warning me of things, and when I corrected him he acknowledged the mistake, then forced, yeah that’s right, June, so I guess a little while back, I crinkled my eyebrows in confusion, what is he alluding to, and now the elevator doors are closing and we’re going to be apart real soon, and I’m still wondering, what did he mean, and then he says, last thing to speak before they shut, well, this is the type of place where he died at least, a mall, this kind of mall for sure, and I didn’t believe it, couldn’t believe it, only because I never thought they had malls like this back then, so he must be wrong, or then wait, is he trying to tell me something else, is he baiting me, what is the meaning of this chicanery, I’m so confused. But then the doors slam shut and I raise my hands up, to my head, where was I led, how did I get here, what is the meaning of any of this? And now I turn around, realize again that Shea is gone, she leapt down the one-way stairs the wrong way, minutes ago, I tried to follow but I didn’t leap, couldn’t leap, the leap was too long and terrorizing, so I rushed around to the beginning to see if I could just run it, all of the stairs, down, down, down, instead of the half like she did, leaping, jumping, throwing caution to the wind, but I couldn’t, the stairs were moving too fast, they threw me back, goddammit, and at the railing I could see, Shea rushing off on the lower level looking for that store, how did she get so brave, just jumping off and wow, automatically saved, landing the right way the first time and then making her way down to the floor, I’d be sore, if I didn’t fall and then get dragged up with unceremonious ill will and hair pulling for sure. So I’m alone now and wandering around, thinking about how I’m going to get in trouble for losing Shea, today, they are going to say, you are so fucking irresponsible, how do you lose your little sister that way, and there will be no good words of mitigation, terrible sensation, losing a family member on a short vacation, ah me, how do these things keep occurring, I also lost my mother one time on a short run, lizard canyon, she went the wrong way, strayed, and I know my dad would say, “How could you lose her? You better go find her!” He thinks hide and seek and lost and found are stupid games, the worst to play, and I’ve never been very good at ruses, or excuses, so I just flutter and stutter and finally agree, ah me, I think I’m paranoid, this mall was where his dad apparently died. But I still don’t believe it. Nevertheless and meaning no offense, I just walk aimless, aimlessly, trying to figure out where to be, and how to see, a way to get out of here free and clear, not in any trouble.



WE CAME THROUGH ALL THE HASSLES AND HANGUPS AND FINALLY GOT THE JOB, the undercover assignment that we had been pining for, me and Tegan, Tegan and I, we were flying high to the Ukraine for a big, big, big assignment, career-defining, undercover type of thing, a sting, to discover treachery, I guess we were working for some kind of man, America, Europe or Greenland, and they wanted us to infiltrate the mob, two young boys coming up, we’d date them, learn their secrets, gain their confidence, no-nonsense, we were stoked. The flight I don’t remember but suddenly we were there, Kiev, with them, they liked us, pride in us, wanted us, so we hung out, went out, luxuries, pleasantries, subtleties, seduce us please, and, oh man, the truest part of this fucking thing, we ended up liking them back, off track, the assignment we coveted, thinking of shoving it up the asses of the man, these two guys are grand, nice, cute, smart, the whole fucking package, but Tegan, more determined than I, kept her eyes on the prize, the sting, she wanted it all, the full haul, all the acclaim, so she called it in, said “Are you ready?” And her boy said “Hell Yeah” but it was never meant to be, the police, they came rushing in to make their arrest, two guys in handcuffs, ah me, then afraid to look him in the eye, his middle finger extended, ‘fuck you’ he intended, and I merely shrug, helpless, careless, selfish, we got our prize through all kinds of lies, now here we are, heroes of the night. As they haul mine away, the cute Ukrainian guy, he gets offered nine years on a deal, NINE, what line, but he immediately shouts, “I’ll take it!” as if it’s a gift, and I think to myself, nine years and he’ll be forty, what a shame, this is lame, why do they have to take mine? He starts to walk off, shameful and scared, regretful and wearied, and I, in all my useless, unrelenting arrogant vanity, so cavalierly turn away, yet he shouts, loudly and fiercely, his violent finger now missing, shouts “It’s OK, I forgive you!” And I smile devilishly, though trying for a spark of sympathy, knowing I will never see this guy, not for the life of me, never again.

Somehow we get back, I can’t remember the track that led us to Southern California, but there we were, Tegan and I, with packs twenty pounds each on our backs, looking at each other and wondering how, how will we surmount the goliath of Mary Lane with our packs on our backs, how? Just then and perhaps fortuitously, we see one of the Winter twins backing a semi-truck out of a spot, leaving the Mormon church parking lot, and Tegan flags him down because she knew him from around, from high school, same graduating class, maybe even middle school too, so we do, we flag him down, and he picks us up, lets us in, packs and all, for the ride up the hill, and I am so grateful, mostly because Mary Lane is hateful, daunting, curvy and eccentric, etcetera.

In the back of the truck, we find his sister Kim, I think her name is Kim, I think of her as someone else and never really knew her last name was Winter, younger sister of the twins, but I never ask her to confirm her name is Kim, I decide it just is and we move on, and anyway, on a whim, I look over at what she is reading, some kind of book with a worn out binding, and I catch part of the name on the side, the cover, Jason something, and I wonder, is this the Jason I discovered, sophomore year of high school? Then I’m being a hateful asshole in my mind wondering how did he write a novel, or rather, how did he publish a novel during that time when I still can’t discover the best way to appeal to publishers? My animosity set aside for curiosity, I wonder what Jason wrote about at seventeen, when I was just discovering Benzedrine, and other drugs, he was writing a novel, a novel, how could I have not known, and the weirdest fucking thing that Kim tells me, what I can’t believe, is it focuses on the mad crush that Jason had on a girl from high school, and I see through the parentheses that she has written in a name, my name, is it me? I ask her about it and her answer is simple, “I assumed it was you.” I’m not impressed by her analysis and I tell her so, and then, as if a witness on the stand, she proceeds to give me all the reasons, and all the evidence as to why she has made this proclamation, this determination, the kind of things I could not imagine, things she has figured out apparently over the years, weird, and I’m almost scared by the analysis, randomness, because she has made connections that I’ve never even touched upon, and although it seems she might be right, it doesn’t sit right, how could it be me, ME? I’m perturbed, disturbed, and not just because I was the subject of allure and didn’t know it, but also because I now want to know what it says about me. And I find myself thinking, blinking, waiting for it to sink in, and Kim, sister of the Winter twins, says “oh well you can borrow it if you want to read it” and I accept the offer, then simple laughter, her probably thinking I’m vain, deranged, wanting to complain, but I’m really sane, just trying to reconcile, all the evidence piling up, the words adding up, how could he have written about me, and me not knowing anything, ignorant to the signs, tangents and cosigns, I was really oblivious back in those days, it was just a phase.

I rifle through the pages, attempting to mitigate this, it wasn’t me, couldn’t be me, just sounds like me, oh please, car sickness getting to me as one of the Winter twins weaves in and out between lines and lanes, up curves, swerving, twirling, he missed our turn off, but Tegan doesn’t seem alarmed, disarmed, fallen asleep between the turns, and I shake my head, thinking back to Brooklyn, spring, when we rode the line to Sunset Park, and Tegan fell asleep on the Bart, oh they call it subway in New York, fell asleep, almost missed our stop, but me being awake and yelling out, “this is our stop!” we made it back without hassles. Ah well, so irrelevant a tangent that I had to mention, here because of the run-on sentence, and also because I am, not thinking, blinking, writing what is sinking in. And anyway, we ride up past our street, down and then up discreet, I rub my eyes and think, we’ll have to walk just as far back to our street, but it matters not, only because now I’m all wrapped up in this book about me, someone composed a narrative singularly, and about me, and I was none the wiser for a serious decade.

We come to a stop and wait, traffic on the seventy-eight, hard to pull off so we suddenly jump off, on brink of thoroughfare and Summit Avenue, to trek back from here, less daunting somehow, to our street, maybe we’ll meet someone who could give us a ride. And this is really the part where it all falls off, trying to remember the memory, digging deeper and deeper into my psyche, everything I found out back then, when, we just so randomly bumped into high school friends, the chivalry of the twins, rescuing us from curvy uphill battle with Mormon lane, ah insane, no biker lane, we could have been slain, oh man, ok, well ah, I guess I’m done. ////



WE HAVE THE CHOICE TO MAKE LITTLE CORPSES, and some of us do! procreating then waiting, to nurse, nurture, mature another life into being, another life that will one day die, hence the corpses, making birth and death forever linked in time, oh my! we’re all made to die, we’re all going to die! sigh, am I writing this, like Kerouac, because we are all going to die? What makes any difference in time, what makes us better or worse than the ones who came before us, we’re all just cradling the grave, straddling and negotiating an untamed wave, a futile life to live and somehow brave, I’m supposed to brave a life of obstacles, struggles and impediments just cause, just cause I was born a little corpse, insignificant and irreverent but forced to depend on necessities, oxygen, amoxicillin, heroin? What the fuck, come on, don’t string me along, this is wrong, why have I been made to wait, elate, berate, just to amuse, this is the ultimate abuse, how have I been punished not to choose, just to lose, this is what I never wanted, forever haunted, a life with no measure of satisfaction! I’m a little corpse that was made twenty-seven years ago, made to suffer a death unspoken years or months from now, for no purpose other than frustration, exasperation, indication, subtle indemnification, finally petrification, putrefaction, there’s no purification, we were all made to die, little corpses made to writhe and wither, not thrive, and finally die, and somehow I suppose we are all supposed to be OK with that fate, just fine, not whine, they can create me to die, I shouldn’t sigh, put me through a lifetime of struggles, and I, I should still sit here and have pride, be wise, happy with the outcome, not shun or speak out against a faulty system, just be happy with the outcome, well my mind precludes such compromise, it doesn’t thrive, not without some kind of prize, a goal, something to work for, achieve, I want a reprieve, some kind of break that lets me wait, play, look around and delay, think up the next step, measure up, relax and step up, I want everything I can’t have, and the things I can, real experience while I’m grand, while I’m awake, for fuck’s sake, can’t any talent ever be praised? Long ago I lost the point of this tirade, it happens when I’ve been made to wait, my own projects belated, obscure and relegated to the back-burner, while I write nonsense for the scholastic learners, scholarship earners, the turning point, is this what I was meant for?

Monday, August 11, 2014

Visions by Lux

I GOT THAT ENDORPHIN RUSH TODAY, first time in a long time and it felt like something special, something almost magic, that elusive, mad rush that people talk about getting from workouts like long runs and muscle churning straightjacket exercise and burning too, the rush I was almost beginning to believe was an unreality, a tired fiction because I have run now everyday for the past 500 or 600 days, actually much longer in fact, at least since age twenty-one or twenty-two. Treadmill days repeat one after another, five or six miles, but no high, no kicks, just exercise, just maintaining the outer shell that allows me to appeal to some men my age and maybe younger, damn the younger because I want the older, but the older don’t like me, they see me as narcissistic and shallow and with an inability to commit, trust, give of myself, the younger ones care less I guess, but the older ones are of so much higher worth to me for some reason, psychological in nature, the older ones signal more hope or protection or something primordial, and I like it, lust after it in fact, so much so that I dismiss the younger ones without a second look, second chance, afterglow sex, I’ll confess I use them for what they can offer, fully admitted, the young ones used because they can’t provide me the psychological, primordial thing I want (being older than me), so they do not get a chance, and even the older ones sometimes, almost always, get left by the wayside because I don’t like the idea of being with one man. So then when it’s over I rush off, so fast, sometimes even making up an excuse about why I must leave during sex, quite a distraction, me coming up with plausible excuses in my head, running about as if on a treadmill, just ransacking my mind for an excuse why I have to go back home and leave him alone, because I don’t want to be there any longer than I have to; the afterglow talk really doesn’t intrigue me very much but nevertheless the stress and distress of coming up with believable excuses can, in certain circumstances, take me out of the game for a bit.


RECENTLY I WAS INVOLVED WITH A MAN who probably couldn’t stand me in certain circumstances because of my propensity to leave, run and hide after sex, the afterglow when he wanted to share closeness or proximity or other emotional things that I never have been able to quite understand because it never made sense why people would want to share sleep together once the sex was over. For some reason that might make sense to other similarly-situated people, he wanted a relationship which he defined as closeness and being together for a long period of time, something that I cannot stand. I cherish my alone time so much so that I necessarily try to distance myself from others and I cannot understand the need to be with someone longer than it takes to get off. This man probably admired me to a certain degree but became disillusioned with the fact that I was disingenuous in nature, at least so far as I tried and failed to fake my emotions sincerely. I’ve never been very good at faking sincerity or real sincerity for that matter, just trying to nod my head and smile when people were looking for that emotional connection or at the very least some flicker of recognition and understanding in my eyes, I strived, but it was not there, never there. It is something hard for me, to emulate others in this respect, the emotionally-savvy, and I guess to a certain extent I feel damned to do so because of the deceitfulness it employs and I’ve never been one to indulge psychopathic tendencies; I like being straightforward and honest. At the end I think he hated me and loved me at the same time, a contrary set of principles that cannot be resolved, and even still I feel nothing for him, the same nothing I felt for all the men who came before him. And I think I’m truly sorry for that. Of course I am always placated by the fact that there is another man around the corner that will serve the same selfish and shallow purposes, a man who will entertain me and one I can enjoy some time with, doing time, just waiting, waiting, waiting for death.


TONIGHT, first night in a long string of nights that I was able to sleep, almost immediate relief despite endorphin rush and in spite of all my obsessing over the slippage of time and the decay we are all slaves to by time, that ugly monster that just keeps rip, rip, ripping our youth away, day by day, but I did sleep, long and relaxing, the most that could be expected from someone like me, sleep coming without the aid of narcotics or bud, without smoking or shooting, lovely passing out in just time, different than regular, normal falling asleep that I have become so unaccustomed to on account of all vices, devices really, just being all available to me and helping me find momentary peace in the whirlwind world we currently live in where everything assaults my consciousness on a normal basis, pitiful things that make this world situationally reprehensible, and I have to make the most out of not revealing all the bitterness I feel when I am alone and vulnerable to the ghastly images of terrestrial life that assault my waking hours. In my sleep I might have dreamed, but different types of dreams that weren’t nightmares, typical unnerving sort of horrific fodder that the brain assails you with in another one of the most vulnerable times of night, the quiet dream sleep we all hope to attain, finding us almost too willing to take it lying down, and I did in fact dream a nice dream that I even remember now, 10 or 15 hours later, writing it down, something triggering a memory, probably reading Kerouac and his nascent almost accidental mentioning of Greenland and I think about my dream and how Greenland was probably a factor in it, as it is in most dreams that I have because I want to visit there sometime just to say that I did. Greenland must be the most fantastic place that most people we meet have never been, a country or a continent (?) on its own, separated by angry seas and slowly melting icebergs, caps that warn us to stay away, but I can’t, don’t really want to, because I dream of Greenland frequently and want to visit it for nothing more than the stories and the ability to state with honesty, arrogance and pride, “I’ve been to Greenland.” In my dream, I was in Greenland, beyond in fact, to the Arctic circle, which in my dream I think was actually the Antarctic circle, but it was much smaller, I could see the slant of the globe, see it turn, an actual impossibility, but in my dream I was turning and yearning, Antarctica was the Arctic and the southern hemisphere was a non-factor, I was skirting by Greenland and traversing the globe in seconds flat, not just because of the heightened speed of dream time, but because I was on a mission, listen, this was the best dream that I have ever forgotten.


I WOKE UP THIS MORNING, 6:19 AM, Cali Time, as if that matters, pacific time is just another word for pretention, but it’s an entirely different type of pretention than they have on the East Coast and I almost prefer the East Coast because despite the weather anomalies I do feel like I might lead a slightly cooler life in New York as opposed to Los Angeles. It ended up being closer to 7:09 AM when I actually decided to make something of the day, so many in a row wasted because of my indifference and also because I have still been unable to make good on any of the promises that I have made, to myself or others, such a loser I am just repeating days after days and still maybe thinking, somehow, the tomorrow will be different. Definition of insanity is unlost by me as I make use of the waning day to write, before food makes me tired and lethargic, before responsibilities make me rationalize tired today, I’ll do more tomorrow morning after a run and a protein-loaded breakfast burrito. But ah me and then it’s too late because the sun is out and I want to go swimming and then comes afternoon where I submit to substances and try to write down some of the things that I thought about during the day. For one, I tried to recapture that endorphin high today; did the same thing as yesterday, more in fact, to see if I could feel something; I felt a little, there was a spark, but nowhere near the flash I felt yesterday. We are living in such a tragic world, a world where we cannot successfully create yesterday.


I’M BACK TO MY OLD WAYS TODAY because running faster and longer isn’t bringing back the endorphin rush of that one time, two days ago or three, where I was actually able to claim, reclaim something called a natural high, but today no such luck, so running back to the good old stuff, the charm of my disarm, the stuff that makes me high and momentarily, ephemerally semi-content, and the rationalizations are back too, the ones I must tell in order to turn every moment into an acceptable distortion of my life as I see it. Madness the things we go through to survive and thrive in our own eyes, paranoia embraced, even seen as some kind of ugly badge of honor, without it I might be lost or at the very least not myself, someone else who cannot enunciate, even though it can be quite hard to say what I think on the spot, standing next to the wooden podium, long fingers tapping, tapping, tapping, thinking about what I am going to respond with when he finishes talking, wondering if it sounds good or logical or true, judge looking down at me, punk kid, lazy haircut, stoned eyes, red and blurry, not even thirty, just treading water and hoping to toe the line between career and passion, knowing somehow almost intuitively that passion lies elsewhere, far far away from the legal world of boring “may it please the court” simple polite talk, but roped in and cuckolded nonetheless, making the best or striving anyhow in the moment when our eyes meet and we both know that there is no way for me to be persuasive enough to matter in the way we sort of think we should before everything starts. Next week is going to be hard, stressful, long-lasting, pitiful little week where money will come in but rituals and routines will take a backseat, and I know the mature thing to do is embrace it but I’ve spent so long being that punk ass kid with urgency of the mouth who needs to be semi-close to a keyboard so I can type down the thoughts that come to mind, the sentences of pure enigmatic, spatially eloquent and morose words that plainly indicate some whim that I feel must be written down, that I feel cannot be forgotten (and I forget so many of them when I am away), because if it is forgotten it will never be said, not in the way I would have said it and even if the feeling can later be represented or has already been represented in some way, it will not have the same hopelessly stimulating luster that I meant for it when I figured out the perfect way to say it and the words and the order and everything, all in my head. Such fleeting thoughts so rarely can be re-obtained once they have left the forefront of the mind. This is reason one why I don’t like to work.


TRIED AND FAILED TO REACH ME, reach out, throw a rope long enough to do more than just hang myself, such horrible images of asphyxia haunting pinnacle middle of the night wakened moments, 3 AM, and for some reason everything is so much more ghastly and terrifying at 3 AM, right in the thick of night, without light, sun so far away from rising, not Greenland now where the sun is always up, penetrating, worrying inhabitants for different reasons altogether, but the real 3 AM nights, in the nights of the other world, hold such terror because of the thoughts and realizations of demise, decay, death, stronger then somehow, overtaking the mind that tosses and turns with the body, somehow connected and yet on different tracks with different fates entirely, depending on philosophical lean I guess, but nonetheless 3 AM evokes a type of hysteria, paranoia, gripping big thoughts, racing heart, envisioning all the inevitabilities of deterioration, decomposition, degeneration, visions so overwhelmingly brutal and repugnant in my mind at night that my stomach turns and I, in all my glorious arrogance and cavalier indifference decide to make the ultimate compromise, a sacrifice of the soul so to speak (used here in strictly secular terms), the letting go of all the concerns that so willingly and eagerly attack my mind, almost vengefully so, let it all go so that for the time being I can embrace the ignorance that is bliss and get some much needed rest. Of course, and naturally so, 3 AM turns to 4 AM and somewhere in the depths of the 4 o’clock hour I think I eventually lose consciousness, become serene, almost accepting of the ugly fate we are doomed to go through as a product of life, a living being that has skin and blood and organs that will fail and decay, cobweb epoxy, given the stubborn passage of time, immortality an unimaginable dream, a hope, a bated-breath miracle narcissist spend countless hours thinking about, but even we must submit to exhaustion given time, a parallel simile for the final, inevitable call. They all failed to reach me, ME with my punkish hair and my slippery smile, so charming and devilish in a way, but also just totally accepting of anyone and everything as long as they don’t give me a reason not to, try very hard to not judge a book by its cover, as I’ve been judged, to give everyone or mostly everyone the chance to impress me, so I can experience everything there is and “dig” it all, get the kicks I need to get before this world is over and I am just floating along unconscious in some unknowable blackness, without a thought or a word or an inkling to describe it, notionless blackness, emptiness, indefinable and uninteresting, like a long sleep or an anesthetic coma where dreams do not exist, where time moves imperceptibly, where things are without your ability to document them, see them, hear them, feel them, read about them, where nonexistence rightly champions and pain and fear are sensations without meaning because everything becomes a sensation without meaning in the fathomless depths of the thing called death. Heaven, hell, afterlife, blackness, they are all the same in my head, in my mind, the place where logic resides, idealistic miracles pushed aside, not running, running, running to ultimate demise because who in their right mind knowingly, intentionally skips toward such things? Certainly not me.


I WAS OF COURSE SO HIGH I COULDN’T THINK STRAIGHT, fathom really, the things that were going on with any of my usual intensity, logic, rationality, all the cognitive processes of my brain that I usually use when I am out and about and trying to understand people, places and things in my purview that might matter in the present or off in the future sometime, maybe when I’m ninety-nine or one-o-nine, godforsaken bad luck to live that long, but even though I am terribly aloof and not all that good at noticing things, some say oblivious and I don’t mind, despite all that I do try sort of hard to pay attention to the goings-on around me so that people cannot accuse me of being that selfish asshole kid with the vacant eyes, hiding behind too long hair and aviators worn ironically because I am no hipster, despite what Shea insists. It was at this point when I was so high I couldn’t really figure out left from right, (I have trouble with that sober sometimes) that I see a guy that I think I know, well I know I know him because he knows me and he says to me, “Hey Lux” all casually and hopeful, which is proof positive that he does in fact know me and wants to converse with me and rekindle some kind of ambiguous relationship that I cannot now imagine or define, and I, like an asshole, don’t even try to think about how I might know him or what relationship we might have at one time had and I simply reply with “Hey you,” a simple elegant response that to an unobservant and unfamiliar ear might sound sincere, a forgetful disregard all disguised up in a trendy term of endearment so that he might not catch on, at least not immediately, to the fact that I have no idea who he is and what we might have meant to each other way back there in the black, forgetful abyss, or catch onto the fact that I am high, just trying to get by, strive to be invisible, that invisibility we all want when we are doing something that might put us in the negative limelight of society. He buys my act hook, line and sinker, and I’m glad for it, so glad, because I don’t like becoming immersed in awkward situations, not at all, and especially when people get all upset for me not remembering them because people like to be remembered and they absolutely hate being forgotten. He leans in for a hug and I reciprocate in kind and I wonder to myself how I forgot him because he seems very memorable, at least superficially and shallowly, the waters I swim in. He asks about what I have been up to and I give him a quick, vague response and immediately turn the question around on him because I hate talking about myself and revealing the nothing, nothing, nothing going on in my world and also, more significantly, turning questions around in order to suss out details about him, get him talking so that maybe I will remember him, who he was, who he is, who he could be. I want to know everything. The trouble is that he is not much of a talker, like me, two peas in one pod, and by the time he’s done telling me about his life I am no better informed than I was four minutes ago so we eventually make vague plans to get together and he says he has my number, which again makes me vex, it’s vexing, but I get over it quickly because he has to go and even though I’m just wandering I still have places to wander, so we bid our farewells and I realize that nothing will ever materialize because I’m too short-sighted to actually go through with any plan or promise I issue, and especially because soon I will be rushing off to New York for an unknown amount of time, mostly because I can and also because fall New York is absolutely beautiful. I continue walking down the street, which I actually think might be an avenue, never knowing the difference and being hard-pressed to acknowledge it anyway, I start to think about how nice the day is today, early morning, so much hope and prosperity, not trying to think about how adept I am at wasting it, liking the idea of embracing it, the morning, the hope, the prosperity, digging the day and how immaculately clear it is, dark, cerulean blue, not a cloud in the sky, not hazy or foggy or smoggy (this is LA), but just perfectly blue, reminding me suddenly of bright blue brilliant Dubrovnik morning, (fresh off boat from Greece, or was it Italy?) just walking along the harbor, rushing slightly, but not so much mad dashing, still trying to absorb and dig all of the greatness of the new country, Croatia, so long that I wanted to visit this place, so cool in such an important, unimaginable way, just stepping around, spring in my step, water to my right, looking for a beachside bank, an establishment in kind, that might, if I was lucky, if we were lucky, might trade the Euros in my pocket for Kuna, the Croatian currency, something impressive and economical enough to get us food and a bed for the night in the Dalmatian city by the sea, because, after all, Croatia had not become part of the European Union at the time in 2005.


HERE WE ARE IN 2014 (is it so?) too late for all of those great writers who thought up great lines in middle century times, all dead now, submitted to drugs, disease, the passage of inevitable time, too old and broken and past their prime to opine on things of today, technology, warp speed, new paradigms, and yet how can it possibly be that there are no others born with similar skills, especially if they are going out there and doing similar things, cross-world travels, dumb drug escapades, more friends and acquaintances than they deserve, maverick assholes, punks, jerks, indifferent cavalier fucks, how can it be that they cannot write similarly legendary stuff to be received in the same vein as Kerouac, Ginsberg, Cassady, Burroughs? Is it so that times have changed too much to not appreciate, unappreciate the words of the new generation, also rich and eloquent and grammatically relevant, by nothing more than beauty and prestige and thoughtless intrigue? It can’t be so, by mere numbers I must believe that something relevant can be received by this era, at least so far as literature matters, the actual skill, not just the masturbatory fodder of kids who are so willing to be deceived that they wait with bated breaths to receive the next defecation of a popular culture vulture. Why are we, the new, young writers relegated to dumbass thrillers, the kind of shitty aforementioned defecations of middle management mothers, the lazy fodder appealing to teenage masturbators, why is tried and true supernatural stories of unimpressive vampire glory the only thing that appeals to this ravaged century, why can’t those with true talent shine thru to greater bounds, the relevant bounds of those who used to know how to impress a footprint press, I want to know, why isn’t actual talent lauded instead of condemned by thousands, made to be something unruly, anarchistic, cruel, the product of narcotics truly, only, even if it’s actually good? No one cares about talent, my number one problem with the world today, modern constraints, how I hate how they only appreciate that ugly juvenile shit of preteen girls who are being tricked, goddamnit tricked, cruel indignities, into thinking that there is some kind of smoking hot man brooding with unkempt secrets just waiting to sweep them off their feet and love them forever, are we fucking kidding, can even preteens believe this? Is society so mean that they would teach their preadolescent girls that this is a reality, an actual probable truth that they might attain, sixteen, brilliant, waiting all night for the tock of the clock, and finally sixteen, can date boys and what are they left with? Reality? Oh for fuck’s sake I hope not! They call me some kind of asshole, atheist, cavalier maverick, but I would never try to trick a kid, ruin her life, make her think she’s going to find prince charming, dimples, six pack, genuine smile, even I can’t find a man like this because these men that they represent are fictional, fanatic, utterly too fantastic, for ordinary girls at least, only interested in waiffy models with crack addictions, they wouldn’t look twice at a fat girl with acne, or even a plain jane because they want the parade, and they won’t settle for less, so why, why would we praise those who deceive with fantasies, and delusions of grandeur? They don’t even reach these assessments, the kinds of stuff I think about, not because I can empathize or rationalize but because I sort of know guys and what they are like, and more importantly, significantly really, I want to write something truly great, something that does not rely on all that stupid, cunning shit, the shit that makes young readers wet, I don’t give a fuck about that, I care about true writing and that’s all I ever cared to portray, an array of real thoughts and emotions all dressed up in pretty writing, striving, enough to make me the kind of asshole little daughters are taught not to be.


EUPHORIA IS YOU FOR ME reads unnervingly bright in downtown Brooklyn on an overpass bridge, two bridges that look more like big-rig cargo capsules sticking across two buildings to me, an industrial autograph, a Hollywood set or some kind of scene set, canvas paint, society-sanctioned graffiti art, interested only in just walking thru Brooklyn and digging New York on its own, then downtown Brooklyn in particular, a pretty fucking awesome place that seemed so safe, rugged, rough but safe in its own right, my home for a couple weeks straight, and yet only ten years ago or less it was a huge downtrodden mess of dangerous souls, the ones who shoot, stab and steal, the ones who inject, prick and deal, and even though I wasn’t there then, ten years too young, growing up on the best coast, the west coast instead, hearing about 9-11 the conventional way, from far away, lamenting of course but having no recourse. I always could appreciate the struggle New York felt in the aftermath of such a horrendous ordeal, a terrible fate, and I tried to learn, I yearned to go east to New York and live in one of the most remarkable cities we have on planet EARTH, even if and in spite of those who might target such an iconic city to terrorize incessantly. After the attacks I was told that so many New Yorkers flooded to Brooklyn –- Park Slope, Williamsburg, the ironically named Dumbo, downtown, Cobble Hill, Prospect Heights, etcetera -- and made it their home away from Manhattan home, gentrification, urbanization, trendification, and all of the other processes that a neighborhood can go through to make it richer, more pretentious, and valuable, because at that time, it was safer than Manhattan. A decade later when I visited Brooklyn for almost the first time and realized how much it must have changed, I was in awe of the new and the old, the marriage, the blended nature of things, and it made me think of downtown Los Angeles, reminisce almost, of Flower and Hope Street, because the young and the old married there too, but years ago, perhaps out of necessity, or perhaps something else, Brooklyn making me think of Los Angeles and vice versa, such a weird way to start off a day that would lead to a two week vacation in the city of New York. Later I said, let’s run a course, the Jackie-O reservoir course because I like to run, jog, chase endorphin highs and other things -- no endorphin rush but that was back when I wasn’t getting them much -- and we ran straight through two, almost three times around, but that was after Brooklyn Bridge where we got stuck because shoes made feet hurt bad, and we were generally taking our time anyway to just traverse the entirety of New York in the first break of clouds offered, knowing that we wanted to see proper New York and all its glory, mission accomplished, being patient and young and able to rush around. I made use of shared glory, the thing bright lighted and underlined proudly, euphoria for all, and I took, saw all of New York, sat in bars and wrote stories and novels in my head, the things previously left unsaid, the weight of the memories to be read, I wanted to get out of my head, and I did, rushing, running fast, to depths of Brooklyn or across the river, Manhattan, Jersey, beers to drink, miles to think, subways in every direction, I love this mad, mad city.


I FEEL LIKE A SCUMBAG when I take the foil and chase the dragon, only because it seems like such an immense struggle to get the feeling that we all covet, but gotten so easy through a straw and some opium derivative and maybe also because I’ve never tried hard for anything, ambition being such a hard emotion for me to capture, cage and release, I’m really just bad at being a real kind of star, and every afternoon it seems might warrant some kind of interlude, something that might get me thinking of the right words and phrases to excite the nation, the world, even if it’s self-important, arrogant ramblings paralleling Kerouac’s tape recordings, because how many people really know how to correctly construct sentences, at least in a way that causes reader to awe in something resembling amazement, speak of need in reticence unrelenting, the kind of writing that means something in the midst of nothing, dribble, scribble, unrepentant nonsense currently being processed and spit out to the world today, I hate it. If I could circumnavigate and figure out a way to tread above the defecations of today’s prized artists, I might survive them all and become a historian of pathetic normal times, 2000s, the years that mark the realm, the dire contingencies of painted normalcies, everyone trying so hard to be something they’re not, embracing a different kind of hate, hate for those who have no patience to wait, for the times that appreciate other kinds, the kinds that can write, the kids that might fight, and say what they mean and mean what they say, what a fucking sight?!? Is it so terrible to be against the grain? Is there a right and wrong for those intelligent enough to have their own morality? I should hope not.


IT HAPPENED ONE AFTERNOON that bled into night, as most afternoons tend to do, and I showed up in Orange County, somewhere near Orange I suppose, only really knowing this was the location despite all the vagueness and ambiguities around, that surrounded me by virtue of what it was, still I knew because it was sort of near the train station that looked familiar having walked past it and driven past it for three years of my early twenties, and also because later Brennan would announce that she had to walk there to catch a bus of all things, not a train, and I would drive by and see her there waiting and wonder if I should have just offered her a ride. Earlier though, in the afternoon at the house, someone’s house I didn’t know, we were all hanging out, Brennan and Tom and Kurt and Nick and me, I think there were others too from school, and we were drinking and socializing and discussing stupid little silly and trivial things, as we all tend to do when we drink, and I think I was having an alright time even though I kept remembering all of my high school friends from years back and how I was the only one left that was still shooting heroin on a semi-regular basis, here and there but pretty regular, the rest of that gang growing up a little more and taking on jobs and responsibilities and things, and me just looking for the next kick, the next degree I could get, intellectuality prized above anything else, the perpetuality of a student desired, and at least these graduate school friends of mine could see some use in mind-enhancing substances, at least in theory. Later though, when everyone was heading out, Brennan to catch her bus back north, Tom to slink back toward campus to see if he could hook up with an undergrad that would board him for the night (fifteen years his junior at this point), Kurt to go to sleep (he was already suffering from a cold before the night) so he could be awake and alert for his job that he strongly disliked, and Nick to go home to his screaming child and his wife, I began to realize internally that I really had none of those really good excuses for leaving so I was just leaving because everyone else was leaving and I realized that despite my avid assertions to the contrary, I really am nothing more than a piece of shit junky with slight narcissistic personality disorder trying to live shamelessly, unsanctimoniously, out of some futile and misplaced attempt at nobility, humility, etcetera, so as to maybe make it someday, truly MAKE IT, in a world that I am sixty years too late for. Ah me!


THE DISTRESS OF INTERNAL TURMOIL LIES IN THE UNKNOWING, mysterious vortex of the body’s infinite, enigmatic complexities, wondering how cells, molecules, organs, etcetera are breaking down, submitting to decay, which one will betray me first, hard to say, only because it could be almost anything, no way to tell for sure what is failing and why, the why is probably the most damning, spending nights up wondering, how did everything turn from beautiful and thriving to old and decaying. When there’s a feeling or an ailment I cannot identify, my mind naturally flies to that paranoid place, paranoing on every little thing, what could it be, what does this mean, will I die, I’m likely to try to get others to anonymously assuage me, thinking safety in numbers, but they do not have my best interests at heart, they want me to panic, to assume the worst, paranoia taking over every sane thought that crops up, just to get some kind of secret silent satisfaction, me being up to no good and worried because of it. Recently I will admit the idea that a parasite might have taken root in my uterus assailed me, what a burden, and while I’m not one to entertain parasites I’m also distinctly wary of doctors so I started thinking of mad other wild solutions, ancient Greek remedies, China came to mind. And here’s the problem, well at least one of them, it’s one thing to get pregnant when you’re with a man because then you can go get it taken care of together and feel on the same page and he pays of course because he was the one who insisted on no rubber in the first place and that’s fine, but then it’s a whole other thing entirely when you get pregnant and not with a man because then you have to go to the clinic by yourself, YOURSELF, and they won’t give you any narcotics because they will see it in your eyes that you like them too much, so they’ll offer something conciliatory instead, like extra strength Tylenol and you’ll laugh like it’s a great big joke but they’re actually serious and then you wonder why you came at all (double entendre). I became aware of this situation through a friend of a friend’s bad experience, more graphic in my mind than portrayed in writing for the main reason that I do not care to relive it long enough to get the words down on some kind of record, but nevertheless it always stuck with me like a bad cough, and the vicious nature of the retelling actually added an extra emphasis on protection, not wanting to go through a similar experience, the essence of which she has never really gotten over. The man in question, the one who had infected her, of course tried to shirk off blame, as men are known to do, on account of their limited role in the social exchange, having the fun without the responsibility, but she took care of it in the best and most fashionable and enviable way possible, letting him know she wasn’t one to suffer in silence, far from it, giving him a ration of shit so to speak (the same phrase my dad said that time in reference to a bee whose friend he had just killed, buzzing around him and giving him that ‘ration of shit’ over the death, unwarranted in the bee’s eyes of course and my dad, who has had his fair share of bee encounters, taking part in three different sessions of bee wars in three years, one of those battles had him running for his life around the length of the property, running faster than any run he has ever ran except of course that time where the water main broke and he ran like a cheetah to turn off the water because money was at stake, found it a completely warranted murder).  And the man, not my dad, had to finally bow down and accept his responsibility in the introduction of the parasite to her womb and he paid for her removal procedure accordingly. Now in the back of my mind, I’m hoping my situation is not in kind, because all that drama sounds messy and terribly unworthy of the sexual experience in question, remembered through a haze but remembered nonetheless, as not even close to the best I have ever had. Sorry my man.


THE FRIENDS I KEEP IN 2014 DON’T GET HIGH, so there’s really no use recording our conversations in that self-important, self-indulgent, narcissistic way that Jack and Cody did back in the day, 1951, and even though I think I used to have some pretty solid conversations featuring meaningful revelations with some of my friends when we used to pass the bowl around from hand to hand, I’m not sure that anyone besides me and those similarly situated would give a fuck about what we had to say and how cool our observations and rationalizations were at the time or are now because there are many people all over the globe and potentially the universe too that have great conversations all the time and talk about some real interesting shit like why are we here and how can we escape, and how can we possibly compete with all that other great logical shit being discussed here and there, it is not possible just by being all intellectual and really revolutionary because there are so many people and so many things in this infinite universe to really see as virtuous and smart, and some kind of percentage of them are thinking the same things that we are all sitting around a pipe, coming to the same conclusions and perhaps even better ones that we are, given perhaps more advanced evidence, and I really hate the idea of assuming grandeur just because when I’m high I feel like I’m some kind of genius. Ah me! There are so many talents in the world that I wish could be recognized, things that people strive for, practice for, grasp unconditionally, and they are good, great even, and no one sees these incredible talents except for a small circle of people around them that dig their ideas or their art, and think goddamn this is really great art, the best I have seen, insights unbelievable and words incredible, but never proliferating the masses, the madness that equals some kind of grandness, a place among history to discuss the words of this generation’s misery.