Primordial Drivel

Journal 44 - Trains Lions and Elephants

2011-01-19T18:15:00.001-05:00

Trains blow from out of the mouth of the lion
torturing neighborhoods and terrifying children
with their lumbering heavy iron roar. The
universe may be shaped like the oval of the
soap bar or the cylinder of the condom – or it
may be flat like a chocolate chip cookie, what
an analogy for typical galaxies. Dark matter eludes
us; inference is the sandy bottom of hard-core
objective science. When will the public confidence in
science slip away as it did for religion? Will the
State be next? I would like to sit in the sun
and open up like a tulip or a sunflower, raise my
head and unfold myself until everyone saw the
inside-out beauty it's claimed we all contain. Milk
drips down the side of my mouth and snuggles in
my terrorist beard. Would you like some molasses
with that? Mole-asses – such an adolescent and
delectable word. Yes I'll have molasses with my
tired sour milk. Along with the milk my belly
bulges like the late lazy Buddah. Perhaps this means
wisdom is creeping my way. A sedentary lifestyle
is a gambit and gimmick – fat drowns the voice of the
muse. Only the fat would disagree. That's not true.
The city inebriated cabals around the dry country would
certainly disagree. Wisdom is after all disagreeing
with whatever your conversational partner says. Or
is that intelligence? No, it's just disagreeableness.
It's just the exterminator on a hot June day spending
too much time under houses. How many potential
serial killers release themselves by becoming exterminators?
Maybe just the prototype. The sound of the lion in
the distance train reverberates like a kitten in the tree -
I'll be outside where I can raise my head, smile and pee.
I sometimes like to walk around my house and yard
and urinate in strategic places, marking my fancy
territory. Why not? We're animals too I hear. Of
course it's true as far as truth may go. I don't see elephants
tearing a hole in the ozone layer. Nor do I see antelope
creating statues of Rodin or Poor Juila.

5.5.09

Journal 43 - Old Kentucky Winner

2011-01-18T17:08:00.004-05:00

(Note: it's been a while. I'm going to try to at least get the rest of the writing journal digitized and posted. I haven't done these exercises in over a year. Fiddling with other stuff - namely a new obsession with photography - but writing will return)

There's the singing of Old Kentucky – before the
Kentucky Derby – I feel I should be more moved
or emotional. I'm distant. Though the ritual felt
like a typical college football event. The announcer
talks like an auctioneer – words spoken quickly
and only indeterminately intelligibly. I'd like to be
a racing horse though. Or bloodhound dog. Ironically
or not the people here in the bar have their ties
and their dresses and their hats. How socially aware.
Melissa the waitress drags the trash across the floor of
the bar – but don't tell her I noticed. How un-dorkyish:
the drunken souls are gravitating toward the loud spoken
TVs. How much do the South Carolinians know about
the races? Probably more than my Mississippi ass. I
mean seriously – the suits and sundresses are
infiltrating the windy Rooftop bar. Like a spirited
troop of aristocratic ants. All shiny and curly (and
giggly). Words are sometimes like rain in the middle
of June down South. If I don't turn my head
toward the magnetic TV will I be banished and
ridiculed? Hands are clapping. Oh so serious for
such a long build up and and ejaculatory short
finish. Fifty to one it seems is enough to win
the hearts and minds. Fifty to one by a landslide.
Or many feet. Bahhh. I'm out of breath but not
from racing. You can really claim anything when
you've won. And are a winner. “Of course I knew
I would win.” Well I certainly don't. I know
next to nothing – different from Socrates's knowing
his own ignorance. Sea-gulls or something ocean-y
shit on me with blessed indifference. I should be
shat upon. Like a good citizen of planet Earth. The
eagle shits upon the hare – why not I? Earth
is a violent malevolent self-first place of hedonistic
existence – why blame ourselves for doing something
wrong with global warming? We're evolved ancestors
to chimps – why hold ourselves to higher standards?
Survival is equally strong across Darwin's lost species.

5.2.09

Journal 42 - Footprints of Mojo

2009-07-24T17:13:00.004-04:00

The music has stopped or the music's over. The
Lizard King may still live in the deepest parts
of unexplored Africa (whatever that means – apparently
true). Yeah Right. Mr. Mojo (ain't) Rising. He made
sure of that. I'm curious as to how much nonsense
I can excuse from my regurgitated brain. It seems
I write a lot about wine and drunkenness (like now) -
this should probably stop. Aber. In vino veritas. That's
obviously a lie. I hate reading stream of consciousness
bullshit in writers of recused fiction – style changing
fiction – but here I am writing adolescent secondary
words that fall out of the convoluted crevices of my
haphazard brain like gum-balls from the oak tree.
Blown about from the indecisive churnings of the
well-laid wind. I'm no Aeolian Harp though -
Shelley and Wordsworth were full of their own shit -
though their shit was less bull than my own – or
so I would hope. There is a subtle tan beauty with
a pink shirt – brunette with black toe-nails. Amazingly
it works. Beauty and Sex are distracting when they plop
themselves down in living color. I should sometimes
prefer the cold death of the painting or the indirect
abstraction of the poem. Contrary to popular belief,
well – expected belief – I'm not that abstract. It
betrays me and overwhelms me in its career building
opportunities. Sometimes I wish I were an air-
conditioner or a satellite dish – serving a well-
known function that provides some sense of sweet
appeasement. But it seems I (we) want more than
that. Our lives are short and potentially final -
there comes a point when the footprint we will
make rises up out of the shot-down warnings of
our fore fathers. Should we live our lives as though
there is something after or not? If so, it seems we
need encouragement (treasures in heaven); if not, there
is the ambivalence – it matters not or this is our
only shot. Leave something behind. Our children are not
exempt from our own immortality. But immortality is
just as much a drug as cocaine ecstasy and alcohol.

5.2.09

Colorful Words

2009-07-19T23:41:00.002-04:00

Surely I have not let go - surely
I have not let slip - surely I would have not
not known that she could replace the
moon, and refrain from blending her red lips’
warm smile in a sad disarmament of sense.

But surely now she’ll never know what
snug music we could have undercovered.
Surely now she will forget what art we
witnessed together. I must surely take
my wine and smile and prattle and whisper
undone, in fragrant discontent.

The wind blows cold through the trees.
A brief winter tease.

Laughter

2009-07-19T23:39:00.000-04:00

How many many pasts must we
survive to remember that the dream
has died. I have waddled, crawled,
walked and run only to fall to the
bed and cough with sobs of regret.

Soon my wife will awake. Soon our son
or our daughter will be born. And soon
we will make the mistakes of all our
terrible pasts. And smile at the lacerating
idealism of youth. Laugh at the arrogance
of the passionate youth. The dream that
permeates the ripe mind of the ever-young
has died. And yet we smile and laugh
at those day we lived. We smile at the rain
and the clouds. We smile at the days we have
yet to see – we laugh with the lack of
decision.

Rhapsody

2009-07-19T22:58:00.009-04:00

I
‘It is impossible to say just what I mean’ J. Alfred Prufrock

lilacs have withered in the dawn
geraniums lay splayed in St. Benedict's hands;
down the alley, among the shadows, a throng
of black-hooded footsteps echoes off the wall –
while blood-stained thorns penetrate his death coronal

I have kissed the rusty orangutan
and found him not my own;
I have lain with the signing rhesus monkey
and still I am alone

in no dank corner of this dark world
have I followed empirical meaning;
but on a ledge, on a cliff's edge, searching
the nagging depths - my mind begins to groan,
and at least find meaning in the arms of a girl

Philosophy, that comes to men
Men of Age, with unassuming ties
confines me to my heart, and refolds
my crumpled mind with never-unified lies
where Kant and Hume and Descartes’s voices end

II
Song of the X-Generation

we do not care we do not care
we do not care what song you sing
we who wear our colors in our hair
we do not wipe our soiled hands clean
with one more wasted political vote -
do not dare disturb the universe
with one more wasted discourse
on laws to end all pain;
we let our willow souls lapse into a strain
of a songbird's unrelenting note
for a life not so diverse

we do not care we do not care
we have our PlayStations, we have our games
we walk the crowded streets with faceless names
that even you would recognize; -
that's not the sun that burns our eyes

we shall not measure out our days on
frequent flyer miles
and country club dinner-dates
with fine Riedel wine glasses, dancing drunken spirals

we will not walk the streets with our fingers straightening ties

III
‘Hirtengesang : Frohe und dankbare Gefühle nach dem Sturm’

we care for the chimneys, the sparrows and rabbits;
we care for the sheep and care for the fences;
we long for a present with less past-tenses
that batter our days with unbreakable habits

just the winter frost on morning’s window pane;
bald eagles flying high above the grimy rain;
we care for the breathing; we mourn the dead -
we hope for a vision of promises lost, words left unsaid

December Rose

2009-07-19T22:54:00.002-04:00

I

nevermind the lofty faces that you meet
the faces that you nod to quickly on the street

recall....the dance of the yellow-jacket’s ritual
around the nipples of the honey-suckle stems;
the nights her pants would lie beside your bed;
songs of birds singing well past breakfast -
her leg around your waist, arm across your chest:
recall the plaintive face staring out your window
and sighing - for another breath to relieve her of
the strain from more uncertainty.

II

below the afternoon bridges, under
a street-lamp flickering and unstable -
I swallow the crisp dusk air and
watch the violet sunset recline
into a cloudy chamber of forgotten repose;
while she returns a letter
written by her abstruse young friend -
(my irreverent brother)
when the seasons were less cruel:
but forgiving in quiet December evening snows;
when the mornings were less forced:
resolving themselves in capitulated scenarios

Journal 41 - Technological Toenails

2009-07-17T15:38:00.000-04:00

Papier-mâché pedicure flip-flops, orange macaroni
cheese vomited sheets draped over the bathtub -
my BlackBerrry silently ding-dongs with its berating
red light – attention starved like a 2 year old.
Except that I want it to flash like a hooker at
me – I'm the sex-crazed starved 2 year old it seems.
I'm not sure iTunes can sync to my soul – I
wonder at the efficacy of downloading the content
of my life from the media store. Now is the time
I recall the outdoorsy tree-breathing lake-fishing
iPod-less cell phone nary having days of my oh-so-
glorious youth – bereft of these concrete jungle
technological trappings of the remnants of the
western Industrial Revolution. Science is king or
haven't you heard? What else would be? There
are contenders. But I digress (No!) I won't decry
the interior life I've nestled down in to. If I'm
this way now, blogging and Facebooking and Googling -
how did my childhood without these things somehow
benefit me or make me 'better?' Nature versus Nurture -
I know, so Yin and Yang, or Chicken and Egg. Nurture
is hard to beat but Nature difficult to overcome.
My jeans at least have self-inflicted holes, like
last year's philosophy class on the virtue of
epistemology. Ethics it seems it the foundation
of life and philosophy and religion and yes, even
science. The ethical is certainly a base layer of
interpretation. Brute facts are like leprechauns or
Santa Claus – such a good story to keep the
masses at bay. Masses exist in the white-walled
world of science. Infected. Like my jack-rabbit
heart – under the radar of awareness. I know,
science turned on the lights and washed our dishes
for us. Indeed, it also decimated Nagasaki and
Hiroshima. I don't think stem cells are all created
evil – nor is their use worse than everyday passing
hypocrisy. I want to start a jar of my fingernail
and toenail clippings as a reminder I am nasty and
dying and filled with deposited excess.

5.1.09

Journal 40 - Blue Nights

2009-07-15T13:36:00.001-04:00

She walks in Beauty like the night – Byron was
one crazy son of a bitch. To whom is the night
so beautiful that Heaven denies any gaudy day-
time joys compared with the alleged tenderness
of cloudless skies?¹ So far removed from a quaint
apparition of delight that we must remove ourselves
from the tender innocence that starry skies seem to
bequeath. O the blue of the nighttime sky -
O the night in blue and dark-blue – illuminated
by the light of weak reflection yet faint commensurate
joy – Jesus and Socrates enjoyed that yellow moon
bulging in the nighttime bluish sky, like a big
pale yellow child's balloon floating away into
the starry skies, the chemical explosions in the
sky, the beautiful random unintentional poetic-
infused human-personified starry chemical
imbalances that light the dark Charleston green
of the celebrated night-time sky. Van Gogh
understood the blue of the night. My life is
a cheap forgery like well-copied forged documents
of an unimportant merchant of salt and pepper -
spices dominate war just behind religion -
that is world-views in conflict. I'm a world-view
in conflict. I hang my heave grape-laden head
over the imaginary cliff of the lethean canyon
of behavior. I stare at overgrown toe-nails
listening to the regurgitations of the famous
Pole. B-minor is the key for me. Well, that
and C-minor; I am Pathétique. I would gladly, at
least, tear the wings off the dragonfly or the
ever-grooming fly just to have a taste of
Keats with a Grand Vin from Haut-Médoc. Ah
the Left Bank can be kind indeed. No subtle
binaries though – the Right possesses its own
enormous gems – artists are surprisingly split
across the paths of the brownish green world.
Yes I enjoy blue. Colors like adjectives of any
kind will only do for a time and place not
contracted by me or you – but absorbed into the
blackest blue.²

4.27.09

¹ If that doesn't make sense to you, you're not alone.
² In fact, if that entire post makes less sense than most of the drivel I post here – you're not alone there either.

Journal 39 - 2nd Round Bye

2009-07-10T15:11:00.001-04:00

It’s nice to not have to coordinate my eye-
lids with my belt or shoes. Oversized sun-glasses
are a drain on my better judgment. Purple (or
fuchsia) is the color of royalty – well, those who
pretend to such royal diadems and celebrated
atrocities of social adjustment. Adjustment is the
Epimetheal desire of the ignorant and callow
breeding. The sound of the parties and laughter and
dance music waft over to me in undulant
affirmations of my lost life. Not everything
lost is desired. All of life is a burden not
shared in my bestest dreams. My pen has decided
to be generous with its drawing ink – how nice.
The pressure is over. Especially since Melissa the
waitress is curious if I’m writing stories or
poetry. I say something in between. Since
I’m in between thoughts right now. I want to
be hugged by a beautiful stranger – I suppose of
the opposite sex. Opposites are nice but difficult
and troublesome in their unfamiliar differences.
I haven’t carried my children to the bar yet
but apparently it’s the thing to do. No worries –
entertainment is just around the corner in a
2 year old mixed girl picking the flowers under
the watchful and corrective eye of her experienced
mother. A love for beauty is a wonderful thing –
when does that love turn destructive, the
plucked flower losing its battle for life. I wonder
at times when I lost my battle for life? Before
children and marriage – yes. that’s the point of
those thing right? Resuscitation. I need the
paddles applied. Wait, been there done that –
about 5 times. Nothing’s happening – each day
is like taking steps in the same footprints I
made the days before. Alcohol has me in a
rut listening to music copulated in the 1980s.
Robots have more freedom of choice than I –
stuck relishing in the thought of a 2^nd round bye.

4.25.09

Journal 38 - Rooftop Capacitors

2009-07-09T13:22:00.000-04:00

I’m here on The Rooftop drinking reluctantly
Yellow Tail grape juice, a lavender draped event
emerging from the bricks of the rooftop below
me. The harbor is on the other side of the
condos that spontaneously combusted forth last
year directly in line with my view of the
afternoon water/drink. I want to explode the
artificial skyline like a ten-year old on the banks
of the Tallahatchie. Ah, sailboats sail the windy
sea with such comfort and ease. The boat – not
the boaters. Coming about. Life sometimes knocks
me over like an unannounced boom swinging across
my droopy visual field in shiny aluminum shards
of perception. Who’s sailing this keel-less vessel?
The wind from over the tops of foreign roofs turns
the pages of this mathematician’s journal – I wish
the wind would turn the words and images over
in my head, turning new lines like a farmer furrowing
in the alphabet field – combines have their use.
Yes, a mathematical journal – applicable to me if I
were actually plotting out or graphing these words
with care and precision. But alas, it may as
well be the wind over the water flapping the
stalled sails that is blowing up life into these
inky words. Rooftops have a circuitry of their
own. Really. Chimneys and satellites and
bezels unknown to me. Air-conditioners like capacitors
pipes like resistors or flat soldered wire. The taste of
man drops on the big and the small. Drops with
re-used components of our aggrandized mediocrity.
Reusable components are an integral part of the
fight over God and design. If design why so many
different types of wings? Creativity is apparently
not an option. Arguments of a mediocre scientist
raising himself up and lording his self-professed
intellect down upon our infantile minds – receptive
in their mid-afternoon snack of sippy cups and
animal crackers. Biological development is a
fascinating study – of wannabe philosophers drinking
green energy drinks.

4.25.09

Journal 37 - Monkeys and Willows

2009-07-08T10:54:00.001-04:00

I think the wind in the willows is the
sound for me; the wind in the willows as it
tolls as it tolls as it tolls with glee in the
sound of the leaves of the back oak tree -
the wind in the willows is the sound
for me. Willows and oak are a down-
laid joke leftover from the birds in the
limbs that broke. The wind in the willows
sounds so close to you, the sound so close
to the dove and the mountain dew. Ahh yes
there it is. The mountain dew – what else
to rhyme with thoughts of you. I touch my
toes and list my woes but never today do
I not blow my nose – how silly and quaintly
degenerate I have become. I need a code
of Harry like the bloodletting Dexter. I can
cough up blood but how did the wind in
the willows, the cool breeze of the wind
in the willows transmogrify into discussions
of you and blood? You? Sure. Blood – No.
Blood is the sign of the grape on the vine.
Excitement, a 2-year old's excitement over
pooping independently on the potty is worth
more than blood on the backplane of my
retina. Feebleness is my only virtue, or gift.
How quickly laughter becomes tears in the
hands of a toddler. Bundles of unbroken
and untempered emotion – purse as the death of a
gazelle. Ewww. Pretty but not fast enough.
Mediocrity flows so easily under the influence
of cheap or expensive wine. Thinking under
the influence. Many a relationship have crumbled
in that mistake. Unfortunately not jail-worthy.
But still fermentation is the Yin and Yang of
our consciousness. Still the weak nuclear force
of our souls. Battered souls are like unbattered
souls – they're fucking souls. Not to be discarded
like feces from a rhesus monkey – cousin in every
way that doesn't matter.

4.24.09

Journal 36 - Hogs and Mysteries

2009-07-06T10:23:00.000-04:00

I think I'm past the point of pulling the covers
of Ennui or TV over my misanthropic head to tune
out the squeaky music box of the world's grand
noise – out of tune and painful like a sore throat
in the middle of April. April may be the cruelest
month – but not of geraniums but pollen. The live
Oak lives. My throat constricts like an anal sphincter
about to be probed – in an undesirable way. What
would the desirable way be? I don't know, a gentle
finger exploring dirty erogenous zones. Something like
that perhaps. The undesirable? An exercise for the
reader. It's the constriction not the sphincter. That's
twice. I think my mind (or my soul, whatever)
constricts like that when surrounded by people who
finally started to think when they got a 'real' job
and had kids. Suddenly they pick up one book and
are the next Gautama Muhammad Confucius bar Joseph.
They say things with such matter of factness that in
addition to convincing themselves they're right they
almost convince me. Silence is so misleading.
Nothing nice, nothing said. The noise of the
tuneless world surges up from the bowels of the
magnanimous Earth like a demon or a Balrog breathing
fire and strutting like a rock star. I want to puke
on such nonsense. I think a cracker is a cracker;
bread is bread. Something mysterious could happen
but not to the non-believer throwing the faux
consecrated baker-bread cracker in the unconsecrated
trash can. Mysteries are mysterious, not confusing
until the right theologian runs along and explains
everything in quaint academic terms. I wonder if
floating high above the Earth beyond the ethereal
blueness of the atmosphere, outside the nitrogen and
oxygen (so cold) – if one could hear the multitudes
chattering and gossiping and singing and screaming
in bed – would it sound like a symphony
of amazing human emotional breeding, or would
it sound like hogs snorting in their own
shit and mud? Hogs aren't so bad you know.

4.16.09

To a Spurious Memory

2009-07-02T12:48:00.000-04:00

I sit, to pick the memory apart –
it stares at me with a wrinkled heart:
yellow-strawed lofts and green summer scents
attack my withered countenance.
A pair of smiling faces, images of bliss
unfold out of a hike, a ride, a mother’s kiss.
I hear a sound, a river’s gurgling song –
children’s voices laughing pleasantly along.
Like color and taste, I have no firm measure
of comparing this vision of distant pleasure
with reality. I must admit adorned perception
a stage of unacknowledged self-conception,
and store the memory in a mindful place
that only I can touch, and taste.

Journal 35 - Love and Extinction

2009-07-02T10:55:00.001-04:00

I'm not sure the dreams in which I'm dying are
the best I've ever had – but it certainly is a
very very mad world. I've been nervous at
more than just the thought of all the eyes and
teeth at school – I see those canines at work
and dinner parties exercising overtime. It's time
to recount the alphabet just to verify my brain
has not degenerated into oatmeal mush. I'm
not sure the ABC's accomplish that but it's close.
That or Twinkle Twinkle. My daughter it seems
re-arranges her pillows while she sleeps -
it's nice to know that someone at some point loved
you enough to sit by you in the middle of the
night and rub your tiny back, or rock you in
the chair while battling pneumonia – or alternating
all night in a sort of medical vigil to save your
tiny soul from pre-mature extinction. I suppose
most of us do become individually extinct after
death. Regardless of what comes next – something
or nothing. (Both are in the 12th round right
now) What is individualism if extinction is just
around the corner? Band-aids and Tylenol don't
work when the death of the soul is at stake.
But maybe it's a very mad material world and
Band-Aids are just as helpful as religion or
psychology. A purple cloud descends upon the
night like a giant down pillow inviting us to
rest our hypotropic souls upon its royal enamored
bands. Seems I've found my way into a dark
sound-proof tunnel in which I can't hear the
right music to provide me with a direction
worth risking. The only sounds permitted are
the cries and moans moans moans of my
small children (and the shrieks of my disgruntled
disappointed wife). Love is a record player
stuck on the same song through an inadvertent
scratch – repeating the same words over and over
and over – and each time you tell yourself the
next verse will come...the next verse will come.

4.15.09

Journal 34 - Silver Streaks

2009-06-30T10:02:00.001-04:00

I watch the shiny wet slug slovenly wriggle its
way across the brown carpeted floor – silver streaks
of mucus unlike silver linings stretch like poop
contrails behind the water fattened polka-dotted leech
cousin. It's hard to see a slug on a brown carpet -
silver lining aside. I'd like to watch the performance
of a slug under the cyclone of a hair dryer. Water
has a weakness. I have a hard time believing that
tomorrow will twist itself right like a cockroach
left on its back. My 'nature' images can be so
urban for a Southerner. Oh noes, I may lose
my passport. The tiny bubbles slide down my
red wine glass like stars dancing before your eyes
after being punched in the nose – there's probably a
correlation – a causally related correlation. Cause it
seems is a difficult thing – not so simple as every
effect has a cause. What's the cause of her
hitting that winning billiard shot in a fun haphazard
game of friendship? I know friends don't come
and go like laughter but they certainly come with
laughter. It's true as truth may be (Eliot) that
laughter is the best medicine, at least the best
placebo; the best mesmerizing triumph of our
conscious minds. Organization is a beautiful thing -
self-organization is quite miraculous. Two cups
of sausage and 3 eggs is not a bad breakfast. Who
ate the first egg? Psycho. Who threw the first
piece of raw meat on the evening winter fire
to be startled by the juicy aroma of beef sizzling
in that flame? That first bite must have been
like the first orgasm – no matter how overdone.
I feel my throat and my heart are conspiring to
overthrow and constrict on me like two small
pythons in a death match for the big game prize.
Good thing I'm fattening myself up for them – not
quite like a sluggish leech but less removed than
one would hope. Hope – again it smuggles itself in
through the slimy back doors of my drunken mind -
like a mutt insistent your smelly home is where his
sleeping blanket lives.

4.14.09

Journal 33 - Invested Teeth

2009-06-29T10:22:00.001-04:00

The Easter Bunny is hopping like a white frog into
the cheery dreams of my 2-year old blond-haired
daughter. Blue eyes are odd in this family and
odd are the words of her chatter. Therapy is
around the corner, and at such a young age - loss
is an abstraction of Pez denied or peanut butter on
the spoon refused, her loss is a thing conjured up
by the by-gone wonders of yesteryear's panoply. Loss
is the smoke that rises through the vents and sucks
the oxygen from the room – seeping in through the
accidental igniting of kindlin' from a backyard
beer guzzling fiesta with queso and piñatas. I
want to strike the head of a made-up animal
and be rewarded with fruity candy rotting out my
well-paid-for teeth. I've invested years in my
teeth – 401K be damned, see my white smile. -
how toothy. I do want to get in trouble – I do
want to start a fight. I can twirl this pen
around my hand and fingers, and etch out these words
with knee-jerk scratched on well-lined paper but
thoughts impressed are chalky and heavy with
eyelids and pressured lungs. The day was a big
grin from the child in your 1-year old's class who
pulls down the pants of another student – not
knowing the lewd compulsion that is being
fondled. The teacher laughs it away each time -
until her pants are pulled down by a drunken
daring date – she realized they being so early; guns
are known a-priori. Along with ridicule and
gross infatuation. There are châteaux in the left
bank of Bordeaux that will knock the latent
buds off your salient immature tongue; oh so
cruel in their war for your soul and your wallet -
not unlike the up-scale hooker. Would I pay
to have sex, when it is free as long as one is
paying attention? I guess I pay for television
and internet and movies; sex is more than mere
entertainment – it is a mixing of bodily drippings
such that no two people have sex the same way
with anyone else;- survival is key; lust is life.

4.11.09

Journal 32 - Mold Cancer

2009-06-26T11:28:00.000-04:00

I don't want cork in my belly, even if it's
cork from the Medoc region – corks are so invasive
and tasteless when they lurch into your throaty
world. My throat has diminished in confidence and
authority these recent springtime days – unfolding
like pollen-showered daisies with their nasty
mucus-generating cough. My throat feels like
mold cancer – if cancer could feel. My joints
snap but they don't hurt. My throat hurts
but doesn't snap – I think a good thing. The
room I sit in smells, reeks of sweaty gym
class clothes and socks mixed with a liberal does
of 2 year old vomit – very distinctive in its
milk-based stench. Each breath is like a
breath inhaled among the corpses of smelly
feet and bio-undegradeable waste kicking out
a post-mortem living in prime real-estate -
do not tread on the paths of the dead: ghosts
could be real even if I've never shook hands
with one. Ghosts are such close cousins to
the ancient fairy tales. Counterpacts or counter
points are always needed; all we need now
are the realists hacking away at the fine
chiseled beauty that is the Davíd. So cut
in his naked hard looks – Michelangelo knew
the ways of love, sought the ways of sweet
unrequited love – decisions can be such
surprises in their natural furtive state – whom
now I love is a mystery as old as Plato
and King David – older than the dead throbbing
lights that call to us from the ancient
night – penetrating this man's brush and that
woman's pen – asleep in deep thought the misfit
beckoned from his rocky path I grabbed his
arm and tried to prevent his physical in-
trusion to their manicured home – one more
death senseless countless death, since men
convinced Jesus and the Holy Spirit to sit back
and observe how wise man cures poverty and
homelessness.

4.10.09

Journal 31 - Divin' Duck

2009-06-24T17:18:00.001-04:00

“If the river was whiskey, you know I'd be a divin'
duck” - words indeed to live by – even sober in the
waiting room or your daughter's pediatric care; she's
young and resourceful, able to bound back like a pro-
fessional drug-less athlete. (assuming they exist) What
is it about the fertile dense gravity pulling nature of
Louisiana? Particularly New Orleans. Accidental
discipline can't explain in the gifted talent-drawing
pull of NO, nor can accidental materialism. The
blues is against the predictable strictures of the
white-walled brilliant scientists. I've seen the fly
snipped by the quick flicking tongue of the bouncing
frog. Predictable in its belly-filling encore; I want
to believe there is a significant difference between
the fly and between me. Something more than mere
complexity of disparate organized cells. The fly can
see so much more, or at least more angles. These
asexual amphibian egg-like eyes are spooky in their
unblinking assertiveness. But how annoying to lick
and clean them every so often with your crazy
spiked legs – quivering in the cold dark corner of
the room where once couples danced with great wide
smiles on their un-reluctant faces – where happy feet
skipped round the room in art-inebriated joy,
heads tossed back in silly ecstasy forgetting the
heavy-headed task of dilly-ing out appropriate
political-laced rhetoric; heads with happy toothy
smiles of sweet carved pumpkins the night before
Halloween (when the hapless teenagers will happily
destroy the succulent jack-o-lanterns with the swift
destructive force of a military-laced booth). So
damaging to teeth – whether made of vegetable or
calcium – the gaps are there for all to see and
snide or sneer or cry or laugh. Laughter it seems
is common these days, laughter manages our lost
days with deceptive ease. What seemed so silly
to us yesterday has resurrected its severed head
with adolescent defiance, not what one would expect
after so many years. OK. Time to squelch bruised
apple heads.

4.7.09

Journal 30 - Free Willin' Cells

2009-06-23T00:00:00.000-04:00

Was that the wind light in the remnants of
the bye-bye storm or the sound of the sheets
and the covers as she shifted positions in the
big bed – it’s all blurry to me as I stumble into
the bathroom, tripping over toddler stools in
the dark – life is what you make of it my friend.
(Silverado) The wind still nestles and nustles and
rubs elbows with the leaves in the spring trees –
brief cycles of memories of all the times the wind
in the trees meant something. Fill in the sordid
and topaz blanks of your own throat deteriorating
lives. It has been said (& quoted) that “you’ve been
dying since the day you were born.” It has a
certain ring to it. When is that real turning/
tipping point when the cells in your body stop
predominately growing but predominately wither
away, losing their moisture and drying up like
along mocked toyed-with snail, homeless in its
thirsty quest for a silver lining that is real and
meaningful. I sometimes (e.g., now) wonder if my
life is but a cardboard box of cheap wine –
popular among the sweet unrefined undisciplined
mediocre yet beautiful teary indisposable and won-
derfully unintellectual keepers of the light that
actually reflects a soul peaking out of its leathery
shell like an ancient bird in the Galapagos Islds.
The evolution of a nose – who knew it would
mean so much? Our cells are free if we are free –
but I repeat myself. they may be free but
apparently doesn’t mean bright. A pensieve would
be cool to have. Or a direction – velocity is
a bit overrated when it comes to human to
human interaction, or interface as the cold
scientific philosopher would have it. I swear at
times the wind sounds like some giant, or a
supernatural being, is breathing in through the
big gap in her front teeth in a gasping – slow
lugubrious gasping –furtive harbinger of not very
delightful phantasies to come – nightmares in
the chimes and the trees and the bruising of knees.

4.6.09

Journal 29 - Duessa's Sister

2009-06-22T11:31:00.000-04:00

Words were cotton swabs for my inebriated
brain – soaking up the drivelling drool and narrowing
the seeping thoughts until there was at least one
coherent idea. That was long ago – now the words the
broken letters tumble out of my head like pieces of
hurricane soaked scrabble puzzle pieces. Sometimes I
just say, Fuck it. Not as much in recent years – ironic
as it sounds. The toilet doesn’t sound so foreign to
the girl standing alone on the dance floor at her
last prom waving goodbye to her date as the
mascara drips down her cheeks in dirty ash-tray
rivulets like a melting vampire. Black streaks are
much cooler in thought than in practice. I’m all
black-nailed now; look at me – don’t you want
to see the beautiful yellow flower underneath if
only you wouldn’t judge me by my cover. Wait –
what’s the point now? I’ve seen the mirror
pecked away where nothing’s left but the plain
white boring next door neighbor thoughts and
plans – cosmetics is so overplayed. Cosmetics is
a rose garden over a bed of rattlesnakes. I
wonder where the biker cries before he realizes
the other bikers cry too? It’s not unreasonable to
believe that crying is an overflowing of water for
the growth of the soul. I feel that marijuana
cannot do what my two-year old can do –
make me smile laugh and dance without regret
at artificiality later. Alcohol is a kiss on the
cheek or the pecker from Duessa’s lost sister –
daughters of Lethe. It’s not yet time to die –
it’s time to begin to remember and recall and
cast away such secret little spells conjured by
the li’l leprechaun of laughter we call a tall
glass of wine and beer. Thirty four years have passed
like a busted pipe under an overcharged land-
locked dirty apartment – spewing forth muddy
water with no-one to soak it up. Something
should happen in 33 years. Jesus re-defined
humanity in that time. I haven’t defined myself
much less re-define it, or allow a healthy roundabout.

4.5.09

Journal 28 - Streaked Mascara

2009-06-20T00:32:00.001-04:00

The sky was streaked today with wet mascara
from the soot and shit dispersed from our lovely
fuel inefficient SUVs and trucks trolling along the
highway, which of course was built with its
own fair expenditure of waste. Waste is inevitable.
Ask Newton. Entropy likes to bite us in the ass –
especially when we try to subvert it to our own pleasures –
like the ID guys. It seems organization is not at
arms with entropy. We’ll see later. I need someone
to double-click on my heart or my soul or my
pecker – whatever they can to jump-start me like
an old ’72 Dodge – gaskets blown all over the
road. I sometimes wish I were colorful like the
variant creatures of the controversial kingdom –
say a red-shaled turtle or a dazzling prance of
the shameless bird family; lorikeet or peacock.
The Eyes of Argus are watching the way the wind
blows up the peacock’s skirt. I could be a shimmering
snake in alternating turquoise and green – red tossed
in for completeness. I know where the mad hatter lived –
along side the other mad women of the former years –
equality tends to attenuate sharpness and edges.
Perhaps that’s why women chose the opposite pole from
men – that is, men without penises. Or rationality.
The effortless weight of the wine bottle in the
over flowing bathtub has sent me to the toilet in
a spasm of 1 year old contractions – lost in my
own inability to control my movements I wallow
in my exhaust like a happy shiny child shitting
for the first time in the neighbor’s bathroom –
it’s all good over there. The physical act of writing
is stressful and cramping and enough to require
another drink to appease the revolt of my
addicted legs. I could be floating, floating down
the muddy Mississippi on a wooden raft
on my back, stretched out like a 2-D paper
cut out of Flat Stanley – absorbing the sun’s
twisted rays on my splotchy skin like a blistered
sponge. There go the white bones of Huck Finn,
smiling at Nigger Jim.

3.31.09

Journal 27 - Mannequin Legs

2009-06-18T00:07:00.002-04:00

Legs are so much more than practical automotive
muscles. Long tone curved tan beacons to sexual
desire so far removed from the everyday matter
of evolution of locomotion. And then there’s
the muscular toned ass at rest atop like a
bust on display of a beautiful pedestal by Rodin.
Round and inviting in its effortless in-your-face
‘sweetness.’ I digress. Deliciously. But a fine firm
ass can cover a multitude of stupidity. It’s
true but only partly sad. In any rate of exchange
a woman’s body is the same across any point in
time. I’ve heard of the Renaissance belly but
bring Michelangelo or Raphael here and tell me
the bulbous plump is sexier than Halle Berry or
Evangeline Lilly. I know these thoughts are reeking
with the stench and steam of shit sifting out
of the sewer on main street, or King Street –
outside the CHS Place Hotel, O but tall boots on
long white legs. Color of course is a secondary
attribute – accidental in its subjective interpretation.
Consider the nature of cheese. Injected with
color or aged to rust in its beautiful trio of
texture, smell and taste. Why must things I enjoy
be administered by the smug insecure snobs of
pseudo-intellectual egomaniacs? Wine, cheese, books,
music and cigars. I suppose I must be one myself –
if it walks, talks, looks and acts like a duck it is
(probably) not an anteater. I won’t lie when I say
that I can’t help but watch a thin fit calved woman
walk across the lobby with blonde hair and perfect
clothes with ‘fancy’ flip-flops - she is most likely
a mannequin in bed. But I still lustfully watch,
glue-eyed. It’s stupid really – the air-brushed throb
in magazine is as likely to mean something in my
dream engulfed life. Hemingway said to stop
writing before the well was dry – I should heed
his experience; these words are drivel and a bit
below a placeholder for my wannabe mediocre
existence. There are so many to blame. Unless
I’m honest. I have spiritual glaucoma.

3.28.09

Journal 26 - Death by Ether

2009-06-15T22:13:00.001-04:00

I wrote on Facebook: lost in a gauze of soaked ether;
dissolved in poached decisions and precisions; yes – a
patient undone upon a table. I always associate the
word 'undone' with Isaiah 6:5 (KJV) – but this time it is
definitely the image of a body on the autopsy table.
Though unstitched would be better. Perhaps I do like
the double entendre of the Isaiah reference. The
passage is important. And obviously I've been reading
Eliot again. Of course 'undone' is associated with
him also now I think about it – via Dante – I had
not thought death had undone so many. Apparently
the world is on a crash course with constriction and
absorption into the supernovae of the Sun's future
outburst. Death by fire not water. The prophecy
should hold according to science. And we who walk
the accumulated dirt of our forefather's ashes and
shit, having oozed out of the chemical laden pond,
somehow aware of our meaningless plight through
the magic mysticism of quantum fluctuation and
simultaneous duplicity, only accidentally favored above
the cockroach crushed with a loud snapped back
under our booted feet, swarming under grand intellectual
edifices, that portend glory and worth in their fight
to control through religion or politics – all thoughts
thought before – you know there is nothing new under
the sun (except lust in the heart is adultery) – we
trample on our own meaning haunted history with
webbed feet and circumcised tails, marching
through our conscious history with a machete not a
scalpel – removing and swiping away anything im-
material. My friend and fellow cousin of the stuff
that composes our bodies – my friend the slow-moving
silver snot-trailing slug lifts his wet head to my
big toe and smiles. I douse him in salt and laugh.
What's the difference? It's all made up anyway.
Goodnight moth. Goodnight cricket. Goodnight daisy.
Goodnight monkey looking over the forest for a hazy
place to call home. Goodnight sweet dying sun. Have
hot fun in your long-last blast. Goodnight tree; goodnight
moon. We'll be together soon.

3.24.09

Journal 25 - A Blue Ribbon Eunuch

2009-06-14T22:20:00.001-04:00

The shadows crept along the wall and curled about
the shade of the inappropriate lamp for the brilliant
minds of yesteryear. Is it wrong that I just want
to toast a blue ribbon beer to a friend from the
other side of the proverbial pond? Each night sticks
like acid in the stomach or psilocybin in the shitty
shroom. It's hard to eyeball quantity in the round
purple-stalked shroom encased in a patty of
moist cow shit. Juice can be made for amateurs.
But sardonic laughter falls close to the tree when
someone who graduated to professional drug addict
has the opportunity to ridicule a future cell mate
(whether physical or mental) – puffing up his joint
and his head. I need to visit the sea and stick
my oval head underneath the heavy comforter of
the water and smile like a lover upon seeing his
beloved risen from the murky deeps. Murky deeps -
clichés can't escape my attention deficit mind -
I need it seems a pill to undo my mind's erratic
and debilitating behavior. I did not know pills
could re-do so many. My niece lists her pink
pacifier as her prized possession and guards it like
a gold diamond necklace – she is 7. It's okay though -
she lost her father before she could stand. Perhaps a
primary-colored pill could revert the proper path-
finding chemicals to the rainbow stream of
well-connected neurons and easy-firing synapses.
Ah, synapses, synaptic cleft – listen to me, I'm
so intelligent. Next I will dazzle you with words
like bereft and conducive. Or speak insipidly about
strings and worm holes. Electrons have free-will
they say – that is, if we have free will. They
can also be in two places at once though – we, not
so much. An army of errant electrons is driving my
material soul to the brink of a grand theological
realization – I just need to realize it. Insights
are like the no-seeums down South. I must have
been born with a skin oil of OFF for insights.
High idea productivity – just not good ones.
An intellectual eunuch.

3.23.09