(overheard from two guys sitting at a table outside of a Pacific Heights coffee shop, commenting on everyone who walks by, and just being generally inane.)
first dude: I want to find somebody who can listen to me for weeks on end and pick a certain direction and write a book about it. I don't want to do it myself because I will flavor it with my intentions. ... because everybody is always telling me, "You should write a book, you should write a book."
(and in between these observations, as a woman walks by) Oh, nice and jiggly. Jiggly's my favorite. I call it jelly.
(second dude comments about how vivid first dude's descriptions are)
first dude: here's another one .. I'm driving over HWy 17 and there's this cement luge and a single aspen leaf and I'm driving along and I'm tearing around this corner but all I see is this leaf falling slowly, floating to the ground and then, bah-ROOOm! I'm back flying around this corner and could have crashed.
second dude: By the way, that right there, "cement luge," that's amazing
first dude: I'm one of the only guys I know who writes poetry.
second dude; Poetry, huh?
first dude: I'm not that good at writing poetry, but I'm great at prose ...
(first dude, looking to the street where a tire squeal is heard) "Yeah, faster! Run down the guy with the baby!"
second dude: Do you have a girlfriend?
first dude: Well, I'm really broken in that way, so I'm moving on ... I'm finding I'm losing myself in the eventuality of death.
(pause)
second dude: you're way too Buddhist.
first dude: There's nothing to watch in Redding except for snotty little teenagers. ... By the way I know it's boring but this is one of my favorite things to do in the city.
second dude: It's not boring ... it's like a buffet.
first dude: Man I need some tooth floss bad.
second dude: I hate that
(SUMMARY OF NEXT 10-20 MINUTES: first dude talks to a pigeon, saying good morning and what do you think of my shoes? while the other guy talks about this bisexual woman he wanted to have a relationship with but he wouldn't unless he could talk to the other woman she was with at the time)
first dude (as a guy and his girlfriend go by): Damn, they looked related. Had some really strange kind of chemistry going on.
Friday, March 19, 2010
water juice
I used to be a backslider
now I live with spiders
some sort of sickle cell anemia
scissoring up my thoughts
like rose petals strewn about after a Mexican parade
I beat my fists
with chains
until they are shiny white
the highs and lows are much, much closer now
dim, mirror-endless
I'm scared of the unreachable thoughts --
I'm downloading culture, shooting fistfuls of it into my eyeballs
dousing my exterior with vitamin glue
I'm a middle man, hands outstretched to convert goods into garbage
mind filling up like my guts with fat, greasy lies ... filling the space between hustlers and flies
now I live with spiders
some sort of sickle cell anemia
scissoring up my thoughts
like rose petals strewn about after a Mexican parade
I beat my fists
with chains
until they are shiny white
the highs and lows are much, much closer now
dim, mirror-endless
I'm scared of the unreachable thoughts --
I'm downloading culture, shooting fistfuls of it into my eyeballs
dousing my exterior with vitamin glue
I'm a middle man, hands outstretched to convert goods into garbage
mind filling up like my guts with fat, greasy lies ... filling the space between hustlers and flies
Cafe soliloquoy
(overheard in a Mission District coffee house -- pauses omitted)
I was going to write a song oh yeah I was going to write me a song, me and Sherri. ha ha it was like a chemistry equation. ha ha ha, I feel like I'M tripping. It must be this music. I know, I have the CD too, but it's just freaking me out right now. I don't even feel like I'm awake yet. Did I tell you I was in a band. OH yeah,? me too. I got a blog. I'm in a band. I blog. I band. Blah Blah. Are we bothering you? I want to get stoned. What are you doing? (spreads arms out) This is it, right here. I think all organized religion is a scam. I don't mean spirituality. That's something completely different. Sometimes I just make up the words while I'm on stage. Ha ha. Sometimes we just write the lyrics to ourselves, like, hey, I hate you. Hey!! Just kidding. I don't want any coffee, I just need some juice. Shoot, I could have some coffee and be asleep in 20 minutes. Kabbalah. That's religion, right? We are bothering you, aren't we?
I was going to write a song oh yeah I was going to write me a song, me and Sherri. ha ha it was like a chemistry equation. ha ha ha, I feel like I'M tripping. It must be this music. I know, I have the CD too, but it's just freaking me out right now. I don't even feel like I'm awake yet. Did I tell you I was in a band. OH yeah,? me too. I got a blog. I'm in a band. I blog. I band. Blah Blah. Are we bothering you? I want to get stoned. What are you doing? (spreads arms out) This is it, right here. I think all organized religion is a scam. I don't mean spirituality. That's something completely different. Sometimes I just make up the words while I'm on stage. Ha ha. Sometimes we just write the lyrics to ourselves, like, hey, I hate you. Hey!! Just kidding. I don't want any coffee, I just need some juice. Shoot, I could have some coffee and be asleep in 20 minutes. Kabbalah. That's religion, right? We are bothering you, aren't we?
Craigslist dating
Hi. You live next door to me which I found out when we both left at the same time and boarded the elevator together. It was love at first sight for me. You? Probably not, but I think I saw a spark the other day when we were in the elevator together again. We run across each other so often you must think I'm stalking you (or are you stalking me?) I probably WOULD stalk you but I'm way too busy and who's got the time or the determination to keep their eye glued to the keyhole all day (maybe David Blaine does). Anyway, if I'm feeling all pervy, there's plenty of porntube. I wrote a poem about you the other day. I have to admit it got kinda twisted and dark toward the end so I had to scrap some of it and it's not quite finished yet. I had a dream last night that we got stuck in the elevator together when the power went out. Sometimes my dreams come true.
convenience store in the future
He hated this: this feeling of not being able to take everything in. Nervous, dropping the cans, looking around, head buzzing like a fly dodging his hand. Because he knew at any minute, out of nowhere, he could be hit over the head and knocked to the floor like one of those cans of soup, permanently dented and filling with toxins.
Because he was away from register, because cash was back in vogue, and his being so far away, about 200 feet or so by his estimate, was an automatic beacon for crooks armed with GPS trackers, spycam cracks and teleporters. If he wasn't beside the register to hit the button, the money would not be tubed to the main branch, and that shit would come out of his own pocket. But that's the catch. The store wouldn't hire an assistant or guard, so if he wanted to keep his job, which had taken him two years to get in the first place, he had to continually take the risk to restock the shelves.
Because he was away from register, because cash was back in vogue, and his being so far away, about 200 feet or so by his estimate, was an automatic beacon for crooks armed with GPS trackers, spycam cracks and teleporters. If he wasn't beside the register to hit the button, the money would not be tubed to the main branch, and that shit would come out of his own pocket. But that's the catch. The store wouldn't hire an assistant or guard, so if he wanted to keep his job, which had taken him two years to get in the first place, he had to continually take the risk to restock the shelves.
blank slate
(1) I've always been self-conscious, looking down at myself from some elevated nook in scrutiny and judgment, like a coach supervising a reliably incompetent team.
(2) It's as if my path resides in a phantom construction zone, my universe deflated, wrapped in caution tape and everyone drives by real slow, neck-craning.
(3) I am becoming a habit-run collection of cells, taking in and expelling information like a chemical reaction in which the energy stored is equal to that which is released.
(4) Yet I am even now in communication with all the crumbs and other unrecognizables embedded in the carpet and feel an overwhelming urge to vacuum them up at some point to reshuffle the conversation. I compile lists. What I ate in the past week and how much farther back can I go. Words glow on the throats of people I am speaking with, which is why I know what they're about to say.
(5) I chew on roots and leaves. I sleep one hour a night. I feel a pleasant heat on either side of each eye between my hairline and outstretched brows. I feel it in your eyes, too. I am hyperaware, but there are large chunks of time unaccounted for.
(6) Being self-conscious also portends that I am egocentric. Who loves his world more than the scientist convinced that all matter revolves around his glossy, mind-sized Earth? Or the politician who tightens the noose on his "homeland" out of passion for a reality built out of fear? It's as true that Jesus sits at the right hand of God in heaven as that I am the only lifeform that has ever existed.
(7) Imagine that all experience is nothing more than the brain processing signals captured by its visual extensions, and any attempt to convert these transmissions into sense is no more meaningful than a car's engine turning gasoline into smog. And the way that you and I perceive a thing can be unrelated based wholly on the way that you move your head, close your eyes or boldly sneeze at a crucial moment.
(8) I am right here with you, unwriting these words. My veins are neither brittle or loose; they are in fact imperceptible. I get all gloomy like the cameras are rolling, like this will all someday be analyzed for intent by clones with no privacy and no desire for it in a world where to hide something means to shrivel up and die.
(9) My keyboard's an Ouija. I have my own diseased visions. There is no way of knowing whether anything carries qualities measurable outside my perception. Or that I am anywhere or anything at all. But it is easy to candycoat these fears through neon-drenched lies and digitized mimicry.
(10) How long to reflect on the unknowable, assured that to discover the answer means to bury the truth? Not to bury in shame, but in forgetfulness or greed.
(11) The skies grow wild with flames and heat and just as quickly -- as if slathered in old mop-water -- turn a gray smear. Seagulls' eyes glow NVG green as they flap through colorless space. People with complicated, irrational lives saunter by undetected below.
(2) It's as if my path resides in a phantom construction zone, my universe deflated, wrapped in caution tape and everyone drives by real slow, neck-craning.
(3) I am becoming a habit-run collection of cells, taking in and expelling information like a chemical reaction in which the energy stored is equal to that which is released.
(4) Yet I am even now in communication with all the crumbs and other unrecognizables embedded in the carpet and feel an overwhelming urge to vacuum them up at some point to reshuffle the conversation. I compile lists. What I ate in the past week and how much farther back can I go. Words glow on the throats of people I am speaking with, which is why I know what they're about to say.
(5) I chew on roots and leaves. I sleep one hour a night. I feel a pleasant heat on either side of each eye between my hairline and outstretched brows. I feel it in your eyes, too. I am hyperaware, but there are large chunks of time unaccounted for.
(6) Being self-conscious also portends that I am egocentric. Who loves his world more than the scientist convinced that all matter revolves around his glossy, mind-sized Earth? Or the politician who tightens the noose on his "homeland" out of passion for a reality built out of fear? It's as true that Jesus sits at the right hand of God in heaven as that I am the only lifeform that has ever existed.
(7) Imagine that all experience is nothing more than the brain processing signals captured by its visual extensions, and any attempt to convert these transmissions into sense is no more meaningful than a car's engine turning gasoline into smog. And the way that you and I perceive a thing can be unrelated based wholly on the way that you move your head, close your eyes or boldly sneeze at a crucial moment.
(8) I am right here with you, unwriting these words. My veins are neither brittle or loose; they are in fact imperceptible. I get all gloomy like the cameras are rolling, like this will all someday be analyzed for intent by clones with no privacy and no desire for it in a world where to hide something means to shrivel up and die.
(9) My keyboard's an Ouija. I have my own diseased visions. There is no way of knowing whether anything carries qualities measurable outside my perception. Or that I am anywhere or anything at all. But it is easy to candycoat these fears through neon-drenched lies and digitized mimicry.
(10) How long to reflect on the unknowable, assured that to discover the answer means to bury the truth? Not to bury in shame, but in forgetfulness or greed.
(11) The skies grow wild with flames and heat and just as quickly -- as if slathered in old mop-water -- turn a gray smear. Seagulls' eyes glow NVG green as they flap through colorless space. People with complicated, irrational lives saunter by undetected below.
Thursday, March 18, 2010
discommunion
taste is like
when life is seen backward
eyes like
splintering sacs of priss and be
the occasional nod and wink out
and about
like splinters knock on wood and that's not quite unilateral
or soundless
or you could just jump back in like the swim is a skim off the top
like we are all ballerinas spinning in the gutter
leaves rotting in the sink
ever had too much to say? and it is limbs of the ideas wagging about ever swim between time and watch the shadows flicker somewhere behind? and the fingers drag upon your temple wrapped in a pulsating sleeve, dripping and there are the wolves like lamp bulbs
it's best when you don't listen but here
these lives are fractions, many petals, many times in the mirror I fell apart.
I need space. I need to divide and listen and fear
Pick apart the glass and slip inside
when life is seen backward
eyes like
splintering sacs of priss and be
the occasional nod and wink out
and about
like splinters knock on wood and that's not quite unilateral
or soundless
or you could just jump back in like the swim is a skim off the top
like we are all ballerinas spinning in the gutter
leaves rotting in the sink
ever had too much to say? and it is limbs of the ideas wagging about ever swim between time and watch the shadows flicker somewhere behind? and the fingers drag upon your temple wrapped in a pulsating sleeve, dripping and there are the wolves like lamp bulbs
it's best when you don't listen but here
these lives are fractions, many petals, many times in the mirror I fell apart.
I need space. I need to divide and listen and fear
Pick apart the glass and slip inside
Lies I tell myself as I repeat them:
You are the only one who truly understands me ...
I am all alone ...
Life begins at the nursing home.
I am all alone ...
Life begins at the nursing home.
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