Monday, September 30, 2013

GORILLA WARFARE


People have it all wrong. I had it all wrong. There's actually never been a better time to be a writer. The sea is swirling. I don't think it's ever come alive like this! But it must be done differently now, you can't allow it to be too precious. And I love that about it. I love the way it looks on all the little wannabes who studied poetry and literature, who think they've done it right, who think they're entitled to the prize. But those days are over now. It's time to move away from all of that. Seriously, just go to a book store and pick up a new release. You don't even have to read any of it, just turn to the back and look at their goddamn author photo. I mean, if that doesn't tell you everything, if that doesn't make you fucking sick. Or worse yet, go to a reading, any reading. Try to sit through that. So now, you know, you just write on the fly. It's like gorilla warfare. I write while I'm running or when I'm at work or sitting on the pot, or while I'm bouncing around with a screaming baby. I'm telling ya, it works. It's the only way it works. You get so goddamn good at it. You just punch the shit into your phone like I'm doing now. That's it. You punch it in and forget about it. You never think about it again. And it's SO much better that way. It's like it's only between you and yourself, or the Gods if there really are some. But the only problem is, you've got to realize that it's all for naught, that there's no chance for it to ever do anything other than hopefully allow you to continue doing it. That's it. That's all you're gonna get out of it. There will be no books for you, no readings, no praise. You'll never get a chance to sit at the table with Charlie Rose. It really is gorilla warfare, man. I'm telling you, it really is!
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HEY, WHAT DO YOU THINK?

You think Dylan laughed at the Honey Badger video? Do you think some misunderstanding might actually be necessary? I mean, think about it, it must serve some sort of purpose, right? Ya know, I remember once after being stuck in the city for far too long and when I finally got a chance to fly back to Oklahoma, that first night I got there, I was in my old room where it all began and I heard the sound of a lone cricket and I cried. Hey, do you think the guys in the band, Train, know their music sucks but they're not going to allow themselves to feel ashamed of it, not every band can be a Radiohead or a Nirvana, so, you know, they're just gonna play and have fun with it and, hey, people are into it so what the hell do I care, what does it matter to me?... On second thought, fuck that! Those guys should be pulled off the stage and shot!... I do hope people know I really do try to concentrate and listen to them when I'm listening to them, but it's just that I tend to find most conversations to be about the biggest waste of time here on earth there is. Ya know, I now tend to believe people and sympathize with them when they say they're tired. Life is a fuckin' motherfucker, especially when you have kids. But anyway, listen, up north along the Hudson, there's a neat little town called, Beacon, and if you ask around, people will tell you about a man named (Chip). He's perfectly bearded and when you hear that soft voice and when you look into those eyes, those kind, twinkling eyes, you get the feeling that things might actually be alright, that there just may be a way for it to work out okay. You know that feeling when you walk through a quiet neighborhood at night? Or when all of a sudden, you look around at everyone and you know without a doubt that it's the end of a certain time for you? I'm looking at the stars tonight. I walking home and I'm looking at the stars, thinking about these things, thinking about a lot of things.

Monday, September 23, 2013

IT TAKES ALL KINDS

I appreciate growth. I respect the hell out of people with discipline and patience. Seriously, I wish I could be more like them, but I'm not. I just don't have that kind of focus. I'm attracted to things that ignite, things that disappear and appear in an instant where they once were or weren't.

GET IT TOGETHER

All things in moderation are revoltingly boring

OH, NOTHING

I was gonna say something about turning, how everything's turning, it's always been turning. And how we must turn. But if you don't know that, you don't know shit.

HEY, WAIT!

I just figured something out! No one knows what the fuck is going on!

A PLEASANT SIGHT


Aside from babies and that rare if ever event of experiencing in yourself or witnessing in others, a colossal breakdown of an immense wall of fear, anger, sadness, guilt, and denial, to me, seeing an elderly, deeply in love, gay couple has got to be one the more pleasant sights humanity still has to offer.

COME ON, I LIKE A LOT OF THINGS!

I like that cat on the old Eveready batteries. I like seeing people trip. I like catching old men checking out young girls' asses. I love seeing mangy ferrel cats disappear into the woods when I'm running. I like dead flies on window sills or at the bottom of light fixtures. I like looking at large men's hands and old people's elbows. I like seeing people standing outside of buildings, smoking, thinking while on a break. I like seeing the pilot's hands reach out and flip all those switches when I get on a plane. I like decrepit, vacant buildings and houses. I like seeing old couches and tires tossed off to the side of a road. I like hearing people not be able to start their car. I like seeing couples sitting miserable in silence at restaurants. I like seeing people obviously pretending to be interested in a painful conversation and the person talking, completely unaware of it, and actually mistaking their lack of rebuttal as further interest. I like catching children looking at anything up in the sky. I like it when squirrels flip their tails and bark at me. I like seeing pictures of myself from times when I was fat and drunk and miserable and insane. I mean, this is endless. I could go on and on. But more than anything, I just love being wrong. Wrong about anything and everything. I mean, don't you?

YOU DO REALIZE


that
any
moment
any
#
of
things
could
incite
nearly
anyone
to
kill
you?

SOME DAYS

I swear I hear the trees mocking me. I wait for the worms to stand upright and even the butterflies have teeth.

THE FEEDLOT

There's only one reason to watch the Emmys or any other awards show, to see the memorial tribute. Nothing reminds us better that no matter how pleasant or grandly fulfilling some of our lives may be, we all wind up on the kill floor with that knocker pressed to our heads.

Sunday, September 22, 2013

DRAWN TO THE WORMS


I wouldn't wish it on anyone. Everything, if you're looking at it correctly, is just so utterly sad. Even my happiest moments are comprised mostly of sadness. More and more, being anything or doing anything just means I'm not being or doing something else. It's funny though, I get excited about the strangest things. I was filling up my car earlier and I fucking nailed it right at $20.00. I can't even tell you how much pleasure it gave me, more pleasure than even writing a good, strong poem. I don't know, man. I've just never even come close to being anywhere near a place like this. I feel astonishingly alone. But then I don't even really mind it either. There's almost no fear. I really feel I could face my own execution bravely, maybe even with a smile on my face? Wouldn't that be truly glorious, to go out like that? Ya know, I keep finding myself drawn to the worms. There's just something about worms. Every time I see one, I feel this need to observe it, to pay attention to its movements, to pay respect to its existence. I don't know, I just feel like they're trying to tell me something.

Thursday, September 19, 2013

THE IRRELEVANCE OF WHERE

do 
it here 
or there
or anywhere
or go wake up
somewhere with
your legs hanging
halfway off the bed
shadows and sounds
of strangeness that may
as well be just in your head

DEAD AND GONE


It was the dead of winter and I was trying to heal myself back in Oklahoma in a tiny cabin my father rented me near the lake. The lake was half dried up and I quickly discovered there was no insulation in the walls of the cabin. I slept beneath a mountain of blankets near two plug in heaters which made strange knocking sounds throughout the night. I would lie in bed in the mornings, watching my breath in the golden sunlight as the flock of geese in the field behind me heckled the world until all at once they would lift off and head out over the mountain to the lake. One day I went for a walk and saw a blue heron in an irrigation ditch. It stood on one leg and calmly turned its head and looked at me then looked away. I scrambled over some boulders and found myself on a beach amongst the corpses of many thousand dead fish bleached white in the sun. What has happened here? I thought. What has happened to us all? Just then, an enormous C-5 from the Air Force base roared overhead. My entire childhood was spent with those giant beasts flying night and day through the sky. It was all connected, every bit of it was completely connected. I remembered an ancient man that nodded at me a few years earlier on an empty cobblestone street in Milan. I remembered sitting across from a sad, obese woman on a crowded subway train in New York. It was the way she clutched her purse in her lap with her head down, never once looking up. I had never seen someone so ashamed of themselves. I remembered the homeless man on Park Avenue who rose up out of a heap of boxes. He had a long white beard and white hair and his eyes were the brightest blue I had ever seen. It was as if no one else was there but the two of us. And he looked right through me with those incredible eyes, those watery blue eyes, and then he looked up at the buildings or maybe it was the sky? He winced and grunted and then dropped back down into his cardboard home. I stood there among those dead fish, watching that big plane arc across the sky, thinking about these things, wondering what was going to happen, what would happen to me, to us all, all of us still here, living out our days upon this silly world until we too were dead and gone.

Wednesday, September 18, 2013

YOU

died
because
you
didn't
that
is
why
I
belong
here
when
I
don't

THIS DELICATE FROTH

It's like an undertow, an inescapable wake, being invested too deeply in too many people. It's a perfectly natural thing for us to do, but there is nothing more stifling to the creative flow. Their words, their thoughts, their problems, their requests, their plans, even when it's pleasant, even when there's laughter and love, it scares away the magic. Groupings of people become their own organism. They pull you outside of yourself and into the collective beast. Or another way I often like to think about it is that I'm desperately trying to dive deeper and deeper, but the more I'm invested in people, the more buoyant I become, and the more they simply drag me right back up the surface. But here's the bitch of it: Those times in my life when I have been mostly alone, traveling quietly on my own terms, I found that there was little usable material. There was nothing to press up against, to fight against, there was no energy, no flame. It has taken me a lifetime to come to terms with this dilemma, to become in tune with it enough to know when I need a charge from humanity and when I've had my fill. And this is not a callused stance. I've found that I can love people just as much, if not more, from afar. For me, the challenge of writing has never been about learning how to write, it's about learning how to work yourself up into a particular state and then being able to protect it long enough to have it work for you. Seriously, I don't even consider myself a writer. I only write because I don't know what else to do. It has almost nothing to do with writing. It's about this froth, you know, whipping yourself up into this delicate froth.

Monday, September 16, 2013

WE TAKE IT WITH US

It's an awful fix. You know, you want to see everything. How can you not? I just can't understand people who don't need to see as much they possibly can. I mean, what else is there to do but try to see? But then you've seen it, you've seen more than you bargained for. Especially now with the internet and shit. I know I've seen too much. I see too much every day, from beheadings to camel slaughters to a mass of maggots crawling around in some poor bastard's brain. You don't even need to go to war to go to war anymore. You just Youtube the shit and you got it. People may argue with that but I believe it deeply. If you have a healthy imagination and an enormous amount of sympathy, and you know, you'll need to check your ego and eliminate that identity thing, but really, I'm serious, I'm not exaggerating, you're as good as there; it might as well be you that it's happening to. But all of this leaves you in a hell of a trance. It's not a depression so much as it's just that you've run out of illusions, you're ready to face that next step. But what is that step? What is there to do with yourself before you die? Me, I can still always laugh. Things can still be incredibly funny, and the world has never been more ridiculous. It's a goddamn smorgasbord for a guy like me! And, you know, the love only increases. Even if you don't know how to express it, our love over time just keeps growing, it just keeps welling up inside us. But our love is a sad love. You try to remember things, the laughter, the way it felt, the way someone looked at a certain moment. It's all very dreamlike. My kids, I mean, Jesus Christ, I can barely even look at them sometimes. They crush me, they absolutely crush me. I don't know, I think one way or another, we all get to a place where it seems there is no now anymore. What is happening feels like it's already a thing of the past, just like the rest of it. It feels like you're falling, or floating through it. You feel like a ghost, like you were never a part of it at all. But you keep looking. And it can be anything really, anything at all. There's always something being revealed. In every moment without exception, no matter how trivial, there's always something incredible going on. You don't know what it is but you know it's there. So, you know, I've never been religious, but I'm definitely convinced that we take it with us, wherever it is we go, I think we take it with us.

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Monday, September 9, 2013

WHATEVER IT IS OR ISN'T ANYMORE

it
could
be
almost
anything
now
the
morning
clank
of
a
plate
my
neighbor
shutting
the
door
I
sweat
from
strange
places,
thinking
of
fish
the
tragedy
of
the
fish
that
dreamlike
calmness
of
anything
that
endures
the
leaves
turning
again
the
kids
going
back
to
school
and
you
see
something
has
already
risen
up
again
something
perfectly
not
quite
and
I
don't
want
it
to
be
I've
never
needed
anything
to
be
too
much
of
anything
and
whether
it
works
or
not
doesn't
even
matter
I
could
care
less
this
thing
or
the
next
whatever
it
is
or
isn't
anymore

Wednesday, September 4, 2013

BRIEF PHONE CONVERSATION WITH MY BROTHER-IN-LAW, BRYCE:

"Right? I mean, that's really all anyone wants. You just want to watch something going in or coming out of something. It's like fucking, like watching your dick going in and out. That's what it is, that's all there is. I mean, you could watch that for the rest of your life and never get bored. It's like this primal desire. Dude, I watched this video of this liver cyst being drained! Oh my God! I mean, it's the most incredible thing I've ever seen in my life! It's like it's gratifying or satisfying or something. They were squeezing out all these huge bubbles and shit. It was fucking amazing! It just kept coming out!"

"Man, I'm telling you, I've been thinking about this. People think you're just going for shock value or something, posting that stuff, but I get it, man, I know you're watching this stuff for a reason. You're really seeing something profound in it. It's all tied in, right? It's like this universal underlying property, but you're identifying it, man, like you're describing it. It's wave particle theory. For some reason, you're sensitive to it. Something's going on beneath the surface that almost nobody sees. You're getting to the pulse, you're identifying it. I'm telling you, you're really hitting on it, man. So like this liver cyst, it's not what it is, it's what you're able to see in it or through it, right? You're seeing or at least you're sensing, you know, the lattice, the source."

"Dude, we could light the world on fire! We'd be like Elton John and that fucker!"

"Haha!"

"That's it, you've gotta move back in with us! I'm going back to modeling so we'll need somebody to help out. Are you still on probation?"

"Yeah."

"Damn. I'm telling you, you're the greatest person for me to talk to."

"Awe, come on."

"I'm serious. Are you still at McDonald's?"

"Yeah."

"Man, I was just thinking the other day, why in the world is this guy working at McDonald's? But then I started thinking, holy shit! How fucking amazing is that? It's perfect really, it's like art, you working there."

"Oh, stop."

"I'm serious. You know, I want to work at Walmart just so I can do that little rally, cheer thing they do then quit, ya know. Alright, thanks, that's it, I'm out!"

"Haha!"

"Oh, fuck, man! I've gotta go!"

"Alright, you go."

Monday, September 2, 2013

CONFIDENCE


I can understand the value of having a certain amount of confidence in specific elements of life, but to waltz around with an overall confidence about yourself is absurd. People like this make me laugh. What it shows is actually a LACK of courage and imagination. But then, you know, I've sort of developed like this, I don't know, it's sort of like a confidence in my lack of confidence. Does that make any sense?
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