The syntax of the corpse

Either a troo kvlt black metal record or, more certainly, a boring-as-fuck (a stupid phrase because, well, no, fucking can be boring, anything can be boring especially Serious Things but not aw yiss = vintage Motörhead & assorted other aw yisses like exciting fucking [wot?], Harry Clarke Blue, & 2d4 of the last twenty-two offline lines I wrote) ivory tower monograph, but I'd drop the Marxism you know you want it Mr. & Mrs. Elbow Patch (Giles always excepted) I don't because really who fucking cares about Byzantine counterpoint that has nothing to do with the Byzantines I don't, A Marxist Poetics of Don't, then add charcoal drawings of dead Ed Wood characters, first edition Monster Manual dawn of Megiddo shit, Turkey Jones dropping Bradshaw on his gourd, some gourds, still life with clementines not oranges because being a nail biter I can peel the former, a jack-o-lantern, about a girl, Ar(t)s amatoria subtilior nouveau brut & Donovan, meadows steeped in pretty flowers, beware zombie pretzeldents in a speech bubble above zombie Vincent Price, the funk of 40,000 years no way civilization will last that long pshaw, & you, smiling, because wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee a bunch of madeleines in the madness betcha can't guess just one oh I'm kidding or not now diagram this sentence I'm late I'm late for a very important fugue state, Nod, I never remember my dreams.

Paralyzed by inaction

Particular glints, paired, remind. Of what,
I don't know, & it's driving me nuts,
divine center of I don't know what,
thus, awake, among other stimuli.

Shadows taller than our soul (Zeppelin's never cliche
to this Parmastani man, so shut your piehole). Photos frozen
in order of darkness, so why this is clearer than the next,
the auncient art of digital divination will spill, perhaps.

No? So tell me something.
This way is as good as any,
says the shrug.

Radiant addict.
Maybe I'm spineless.
Head full of crap.

Being & everythingness.
Ghosts, all of you,
save -- to be continued. I lied. The end. Amen. fin

Set the controls for the heart of the sun

Penned in class a fortnight or two ago, because I wasn't thinking about silly geese like #OccupyInsertCityHere, the amazing coincidence of human rights as grave concern when violated over tubs of black gold, weapons grade domestic scowling, or class, all markers of an existence that is nothing more than an existential slow ride take it easy towards Ragnarok.

This, 'tis a ritual, a necessity like once upon an adolescence when life was that & death. Now, the same, but I know more, know I'm often wrong yet am better equipped to handle it. 

It means more, & less. So, this. Staccato, pretty on the page. Spoken, a terror. Cut & stripped & stitched, then discarded then restitched then dropped.



Until a name & a series of sonic swells that burned through stanzas rising & falling, cliche of cleansing fire, sure, but there it is. Spark not the piece, but its inherent sense, the result of its spellwork upon memory & illusion (usually the very same thing), composed over as many hours as I've slept over this time & was it a waste (see below, no), is it a-okay (I can say, no) but what can I say. Great art will never be in my hands, two pair, now & then, then I fold into an eleventh, twelfth caffeine, but there is nothing else. Less than nothing after censoring here but not on the sheet because who's ever going to see past this safe pivot, I'll never show & tell. I'm not crazy.

[redacted: 1]

Whirligig hours spin the bottle, neck
jaundiced & craning
out white noise to steal
a face in tarot-littered streets, to purloin
(over a bus, a bridge) a story from a crowded being. Piercing
the smog, a solar song
whose staves prop up the dead
left, right, here in the chest, though not in vain
if I could be permitted to freeze

[redacted: 3-7]

No commentary on anything that would mean a damn thing to anyone but me, & that is a-okay. Art is its own vent. There is no other reward, sometimes.

You must do what makes you happy.

Might as well get up for work.

Sure, there's some red stuff, & some blue. No Baba Yaga, though.

Night in the ruts

 



Good thing I can't afford coke.

If I could afford anything, it'd probably be an opiate. Do I look like I would enjoy being a human pinball BUY LOW SELL HIGH? The confluence of flesh, electric, & abstraction is a magnificently awful thing to behold when one's at the center, an inverse big bang where the only thing born is a debilitating stasis continually expanding whilst enveloping, pulling molecules apart whilst suffocating them.

What, too much melodrama?

Existential crises are cool, dood.

Various sources here, there, & everywhere legit bitching about legit things, 98% said better than I ever could on those days when I actually give a fuck because let's be honest, gentle readers, nothing is ever going to change but the form of the fuckery (dreamers &/or idealists are so cute); or folks with actual problems &/or observations beautifully articulated, & that leaves me with disturbingly unimportant garbage in the shape of cheap guffaws or coded personal shit that may indeed be important to me, personally, but that is also singularly unique to 357% of the population, male or female or Zeta Reticulan, between the ages of eighteen and ninety-six because virtually everyone else is a selfishly naive asshole, too, save like three of you & honestly, who the fuck could I even tell besides the black notebook. Consequences for truth? No thanks, bub. Thus, redundantly pointless redundancy or yawns spelled out using a variant form of almost English FIRST WORLD PROBLEMS YOU'RE NOT STARVING OR (THAT) BROKE

POST METAL DEVIL HORNS

later

CHUGGACHUGGACHUGGA

[insert bad verse]

What did I tell you. Redundant. But I repeat myself IT ALL SUCKS BECAUSE
IT'S ALL THE SAME CRIME
IN EVERY SINGLE LINE
EVERY SINGLE TIME

[insert power chords]

Oops LOOK SOUTH OF HEAVEN



Play it loud
or Satan will burn down
your fucking hovel.

Back next week, but only 'cause I'll be bored at work.

& now I'm in 13% less of a bad mood, woo, but don't YOU make me laugh or I'll punch you in the face THAT'S TOTALLY DIFFERENT

Hey, a penny.

And it rolls off the tongue, almost

Spiked, fourth of fifth. No, not this that; too obvious, that. Yeah, that that, thirty-eight going on eighteen. Splitting hairs, each a liquifier. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid -- oh, but I don't control, so I don't fly the bomber, yet who can resist such a magnetic water body but the dead? I'd bang my coded head on the wall if I didn't have to clean splatter from between the keys. Contemplation, solitude, storming brain, ink is no lightning rod. Nor poison; quantify the unquantifiable or make-believe make-sense; not those thats either, rather that -- that again -- most tired of conceits. How fresh the ancient seems, always, when new to the perennially confused, the damned that never wilt long enough to reflect, the beautiful molting into the ridiculous, for all time. Detach, & you can laugh at this juvenile convivio. I would, but remain stuck in stupid, stupid, stupid, same as pin, same as needle, ever was. I'm going to laugh now, loud, without discipline.

Interstellar overdrive goes boink

Paralyzed by inaction.

By any mathematickall reckoning, there has been of late more pictures than words digitized scrawled* on the musty walls of this increasingly loathsome place oh how the cheap laughs fool you insert supervillain chortle here, a formula applied for both your sanity, gentle reader, & mine. Honestly, that's a lie, the first half of that equation at any rate stop it what's with all the references to number crunching I cannot answer, such dimestore topography a wretchedness cousin to having an economic lecture blasted through a Marshall stack whilst lemon juice is daubed on paper cut corneas, lashings continually refreshed like a Space Casino shot glass. & I hate writing nearly as much because I love it & what it represents only to have it fail me as I fail it, acids & bases reacting into a blank artificiality, every time.

*if I could draw, I'd sketch rust & Bear & flowers & amusement & loss & a constellation or two if there wasn't so much industrial glare, though those, too, would be digitized, hey ant, get outta here, too, to, two.

What of that rare hour when it doesn't? You cannot see the imaginary -- perhaps it will someday come, one last ringing of the red star bell, gradient blazing the sky before the nation goes out & to torture the metaphor some more, how come I didn't even get a '60, '62 or '68? Rock and/or roll isn't the only loser's game -- & the stuff that comes (very relatively) close, I cannot show.

Socially awkward is the real awkward.

& what of the issues of the day, no, what of self-examination, what of dissecting faith, such as it is & not that kind simmer down you know who you are, this crutch, grain ever weakening, splitting, leaned upon for how much longer as a casual wave of the hand, a dismissal that unlocks a selfish return inside the shell, sulk deftly parrying each strut & fret of the mask?

First, cohering the scattershot, then, let the snooze begin, for you & for me.

Pass.

The point? I don't know, thinking out loud, & typing it. Again, I don't know.

Au revoir? What else am I going to do at work when not snarking, fueled alchimick by the Kynge's Brewe, over the bizarrerie of humanity sundry, infuriating & comical? The muses -- & let's be clear, not just of art, but also of human interaction, for that too is an art**; fuck, feels like I'm padding, now I know what others suffer when I ramble, apologies -- don't come with a GPS, & how unromantic capital R would that be anyway.

**double fuck, that sounds suspiciously networking & ambitiously careerist upon first cynical glance whereas I certainly with gusto mean an art 180° from such soul-destroying toxins, an art that's neither making & broadcasting a grand creative statement nor a self-aggrandizing manipulation of Calvinball, but hands kneading the form itself, the shapes, colors, textures, &, perhaps most important, vulnerabilities of this planetary existence, & sharing that with other humans.

Alongside yours truly, the air stands at a crossroads, playing the blues. Chalk it up, perhaps, to it being nearly three, partially hungover, & consciously tired of all but the fewest of things, strangely, the ones I have no control over.

That's progress, I guess.

Cold, cold humans

Riff on systemick scamperie?Ye olde yawn.

You know me better than that & I knew I subconsciously lifted the above from a somewhere oft stuck on repeat during bouts of stormy insomnia -- this is getting tiresome, chortle, wheeze -- even if the review text shouldn't be but condemned to the coffin, fuck, what awfully awful awfulnesse (find it yourself, if so inclined) au contraire to the desert island meisterwerk itself & then there was the ink passed out on my lap, that as scattershot as ninety minutes of Xavi mapping is to a drunk man. Glad Opta can't measure brainwaves & the discarded witching hour bubbly bubbles that toiled in that trouble. I don't like what I feel & I know I wouldn't like what somnambulist-me would see upon waking which is why I didn't post a treatise on the terror of a smile at 3am & why you see nothing now.

You're welcome.

*imbibes Kynge's Brew & yr figurall flagonne of snark*

Gadzooks, that's scurvie alchymie!

Who's up for a trip to Happy Fun Candy Demilitarized Zone? I'm buying! 

120 minutes, or, ever have one of those nights?

Zen may be dumb -- pour the clutter out? Go realize yourself, fucking wanker -- but too much heavy thinking (reading & listening that's fine but ruminating you stupid brain now let us never participate in such depression again) with a double of heavy drinking, & this 

as bitter chaser is murderousnesse personnyfyd.*

30 minutes? Wishful thinking. No, I'm not talking about footie.

Now I am, partially: since heat in triplicate is nigh unstoppable**, please, Mr. Forlan & Madcap Sidekick, the finest thespian of our generation he right is, prevent a team that has advanced to the final on the back of FIVE DRAWS from doing anything but lamenting the lack of naked countrywomen on the pitch.

*Though I didn't have to suffer gunplay, Parmastani-style
**External #2 should vamoose by mid-September October

Postscript: time heals all self-realization, but the bullet's still flying.

Sacrament

Insomnia & I have rekindled our on-again, off-again relationship & I've spent most of the dark of the last two nights letting cochleae drown in a flood of notes, staring at strikingly reproduced images of this, realizing how cliché & sentimental it sounds & not giving one atom of damn, which is probably why I'm oh-for-six

"Seven."

oh-for-seven in submissions but one has to write what hits them in the gut & draws blood. Metaphorically, of course, I'd hate to get that on this generically suburban beige carpet, right next to the still-wet tea, knocked over by a furiously clumsy pen stroke that simply doesn't have it inside to shock & frighten, save with the 19th generation copy he passes off as worthwhile verse* to jaded postmoderns looking for a Valian edge.

*Hey, it was penned at 2-something & it's still better than Brazilian PK takers.

A pre-dawn walk to clear the head often does nothing of the sort, for, in avoiding stepping on an interestingly speckled beetle, I realized I hadn't brought my camera & being not even an amateur entomologist, such a visual prize is forever consigned to the wastes of memory, though likely to never reach the status of madeleine. Sorry, bug, even if you crawl as low as we seem to, you're never going to be as poetic as the stained glass we strain to see, to vanish in, if only for a moment that we hope to cruelly lock away in a few lines, bringing satisfaction to the gaoler, the prisoner, one in the same.


I'm king of the dead more than Rokitansky ever was.
What's a cadaverous array
that answers to chirurgical beckonings, calls?
What but throwaway wind-up toys
that once played at dream, nerve
springing on sloppily-timed zinc coffins
hauling prime lurch twice a day.
The glass rests, too, belts lunettes of sweat
& waiting while I wait for a mushroom cloud
of etch & blue. Clarke works
in mysterious ways;
in Dublin, in a book
of his work at which I stare, blushing, too broke
to buy, breaking copyright –
I wished, wish & will to abjure fascination. No, I don’t, though
it's still okay to write that, right? Pieces,
how they're moonlit, how shattered by quiet,
soon kaleidoscoping into sharp friezes.
Better to play numb than freeze a cherry color –

if I could be that careful. What if
I pretend merry artifice is golden-age noir,
chloroform shy charm shut.
What if I staple the aorta shut – now
that would be quite the denouement,
if a bit crass. Slasher flick ritual,
neon take on vintage slow burn,
is that worse? I don't know
& shouldn't bother with such noisy splatter,
with such arterial excess,
preparing this comfortable playing numb for the kiln.
Up on panels of acid silence
bordered on all limbs by a poison hidden
below feathered fronds, organs of creative peace trill
vermilion & souvenir involontaire to run
away. To my beloved archetype
that imaginary flight is cut, fired.
The ring & the pages, a dashing afterimage
stains a dying eve with two more corpses.

19th nervous breakdown

HAD SOME LINES READY
GOT SMART IN MY HEADY
'TIS FOR THE BETTER
SO I'M NOT LEFT DEADER

Welcome to our spaceship, mighty Hercules

Posting becomes a herculean task -- how come 101 out of every 100 instances of this trope use the Augean stables? Our undead childish fascination with shit that our adult selves unthinkingly apply to annoyances sundry & spine-powdering because Amazonian girdles are too sexy for this song or my hat* or my cat**, I suppose -- not always when writer's block blocks the noggin, or swampy Helios melts my bad haircut into something worse, or [insert personal experience here].

*I don't own a hat, just a black hoodie of great personal value

**to determine which cat, roll d4
 
The second's a dead issue (the block, not the cat(s), I'd be a basketcase & not posting), the first's currently transient, from hour to whatever hour this ungodly one is ('tis one? spooky noochies) until a word or an image serendipitous or excavated with a detox purpose --

oh sure, you (not you personally, unless I mean you, you know who you are, don't you? Yes, yes, I hear you) use art to celebrate, you shiny happy oddity holding hands (was this blockquoting helpful? I wish to know because, gentle readership, I care)

out of a book (or the confounded computer screen; to satisfy your curiosity, a black background is real dark in the dark) sparks. The puzzle's deciding which incompatible pieces to jam together to-morrow & yesterday no jam to-day though it is now to-morrow, smearing firework cardboard in symbols esoteric, commonplace if I'm feeling frisky (read: blotto or running on a fucking third wind, a mistake never to make, oh, wait;
calm blue ocean
calm blue ocean
calm blue ocean) or, smartly, saying nothing at all, like this.

Whew. Pages bursting with text exist; half of them ascetic wheelie bus repetition that casually morphed into the lyrics of whatever song was in my ear forcing me to deconstruct like a dirty Frenchman; the other half standoffish stanzas; the third half scribblings most wretched including this new batch of the second half, but too often they're as revelatory

including this new batch of the second half x-raying my various systems & finding a malignant naiveté -- I'm afraid it's terminal -- no, he's dead, Jim

as that most famous popcorn flickish finalé. No seven-headed beasts, just radioactive lizards. Does this water taste funny to you?

Surgeon blogger's warning: don't attempt to operate heavy machinery or formulate coherence under the influence of insomnia.

Thus, the recent (& foreseeable) preponderance of the snapshot -- & the occasional bit of ponderous humor but I repeat myself -- these from Supermoon Storm of Doom a quarter fortnight ago or so not that you can tell due to obscure camera failings & the lack of precision Olympian thunderbolts. But they seem to fit where my gooey insides are at, hubris & cowardice fisticuffing over the opportunity to throw my sorry ass in Lake Erie so I can wake up, cool off.

House of insomnia and fog

Since I absentmindedly left my absent mind, & more importantly, my camera's USB cord in the Batcave, here's a substitute shot of the pea soup currently engulfing -- hey look, someone conscientiously slowing down. Must not be a drunk punk kid returning home after a classy evening of binge drinking. Real men drink alone (at home) with nobody else whilst being up for 24+ you just assume it was something other than coffee & tea oscillation shows what you know Sherlock.

With the brain remaining elsewhere -- not that colossal a loss of mental faculties given that I didn't start out with many in the first place -- the pen had to rely on a hit or four of emotion & the attendant danger of emo overdose & dosing oneself to collapse into a blissfully unaware stupor is as effective as cold turkey though the former is a radical unproven theory shared by insomniacs & the latter's impossible though I did have a turkey sandwich (no mayo we're out) though that didn't stop the stomack from growling with gusto (hey I like that too) nor the man behind the mask from the same (I like that less so).

Man in the fog gonna put down that needle & have another pot, still sightless.