belly, beast i

“How much does an elephant weigh?” some Goth girl asks me, while I’m outside of Sliders, the bar tonight.

            My desire to have a cigarette was only one of the reasons why I retreated from the bar and into the elusive tranquility of the city street. The quality of the entire scene is another. This bar is an enormous let down.  All the beer is watery and cheap. Tastelessly cheap.  I’m told only after this kid from, I guess, my Psych class, Paul, has dragged me here that people only usually come to Sliders when they are lacking a fake ID. I’ve got a good one now, so it‘s all the more pointless.

            “What?” I ask the Goth girl, not sure I’ve heard.

            Lighting a clove cigarette with this tacky skull and crossbones lighter, she smiles through pale lips and dark eye makeup.

She says, “Enough to break the ice.”

            She laughs.

I don’t.

            “I don’t get it,” I tell her. Stress the seriousness.

            Not faltering at all, she says, “Sorry.” She fidgets with burning cigarette in her hand. “That was corny, I know.”

            “It was.” I’m not in the mood for this tonight. I check the watch that I’m not wearing and shift my weight to the opposite leg. “Very.”

            Goth girl is wearing black leather pants, so tight I swear I can almost see the marks on the inside of her upper thighs where she used to cut herself with small razor blades. Almost. There’s a stud pierced through her nose, just above her left nostril. Goth girl’s black hair with one blood-red streaked highlight is pulled back into a ponytail. A spider web’s sticks to the back of her neck, etched in tattoo ink.

            Seeing my eyes on her neck, she says, “You like tattoos?” But before I utter any kind of response, she informs me, “I have five tats.” She licks her lips, revealing a tongue ring. “And nine parts of my body pierced.”

            Honest, I start to count to nine in my head, but can only come up with eight.

            I laugh.

“Some girls try too hard,” I mumble quietly.

She doesn’t hear me.

            “Hi, I’m Becky!” she says with a forced enthusiasm. Becky sucks on her cigarette and moves closer, running her hand lightly against my shirt. Her milky, white arms remind me of spaghetti, except spaghetti doesn’t usually have self-inflicted cigarette burns on it.

            Becky’s wearing a strange black short sleeve shirt that is almost transparent, which I could be positive is made from a pair of pantyhose, revealing a bra of an even darker color.

academia i

Meet with Prof. Barnes in the third floor offices of Schuster. Talks about making up the midterm grade. Asks about my mother.

I frown. Shake my head. Then try to smile. It’s difficult to talk about it, he can tell.

The Lit professor tells me not to kill my main characters. 

I didn’t think this was a writing class.

“Why?” I ask.

He says, “It’s lazy writing.” 

This is something he’s been told. Sure. Information passes down.

“Why?” I ask again.  Young and stubborn.

 Angry at the world.  Angry at myself.

“It’s what I’ve always been told. The age old adage.  Too easy a way to resolve conflict.”

“There’s nothing easy about killing,” I tell him.

And I think it scares him a little.

            I can leave satisfied.

anthropomorphic everything

I can't believe what the fence is telling me with just a look  

All lies  

But as it's ivy confesses

My arms feel strange. 

Six forearms spread out from my elbows

Three on each side.

I feel them.

Moving each indecently of the others

 Sixty fingers wiggle up at me.

There are these steel bars, rods, even, in my arms.  The surgery.  It must have been.  The men in all white.  I can remember this happening now. I see them doing it.  this.

I think the feeling might be pain: stabbing and true.

I have to sit down.

Happiness crumbles to the following despair.

K.

Ok.

Don't think about the pain.  Think about something else.  About how it isn’t real.  Mind over matter.

Go.

Go to your head and find that door at the end of the hall.

It's safe there, you know it.

I tell you.

itellu

I tell myself.

I’m calling from behind the door.

But it's bad also behind the door.

It can't always be closed.

Wait it out.

I wait.

The jungle: it grows around me. 

It pulsates. 

I ignore your cries for help.

The door rattles in its frame.

Wake up.

failure i

At the beginning of all of this, I’m afraid, is the ominous question of what it is exactly you are doing with your life.  Since that first breath, the countdown has begun. We will all time-bomb, eventually, sooner or later.  I’m just a car accident or overdose or suicide attempt away from the end. Next time might be the last one. It’s hit or miss. I always seem to miss.

            But if it’s a matter of time, shouldn’t I decide how I spend it. The last moments of my countdown?  When the dimming spark on my firecracker finally does get to the end of the wick, I want to choose the location for that public display we call an explosion.  

I don’t need to be here.

College.

A higher education will not deliver me in whatever anarchic apocalypse is upon us next.

I shake the thought. How much time is there? Don’t want to lose track.

Why do I even bother, anymore?  

Inhale. I let all my angst swell within the blackening bags inside my chest cavity. Relax, I have to remind myself. You’re in way over your head here, I’m thinking.

Just float.

My academic advisor finds me in the quad some time after lunch. She’s this short and slender, young Asian with her black hair rounded just below her ears. For an ethnic or maybe trendy look, orange dusts her eyelids, I guess to distract from pale yellow skin. My academic advisor chews a big wad of bubble gum. Her left arm is bent at the elbow, hand resting at a hip. She’s twenty-five, at most. Twenty-eight, tops.

Advisor Lady’s got those academic-looking framed glasses. They’re slipping down the ridge of her nose. She glares, “I’ve been looking for you.”

For some reason, I’m frozen there, cowering at her presence like she was a towering statue.

I gulp down on the nothing in my throat.

“Me?” I ask, turning a finger inward. Sheepishly smile.

Her penciled-in brows move closer towards each other.

“We had a meeting.” She shows teeth like a dog. “This is the third one you’ve missed.”

“I’ve been busy.” I motion to the disintegrating cigarette between my fingers. I force this ridiculous smile to the surface of my face and blow smoke at her.

“You know,” she takes five steps closer to me and then resumes that same intimidating hand-to-hip pose. “Its people like you who don’t belong here. You make me sick.”

I’ve heard this before and this time has no more of an effect on me. I inhale a mouthful of smoke and let it seep from my teeth as I talk. “I’m trying.”

“No!” she snaps, crouching down to where I’m sitting. “What you’re doing is pissing your scholarship away.”

“That’s not exact—”

“That’s exactly what you are doing and you know it. Such high test scores, such potential.”

I wait for her to tell me that she graduated Harvard at age 12 and took this job instead of becoming a neurosurgeon because she wants to guide the future of the world into making the right choices and living lives much more fulfilling than her own. She wants to fix it.

When she doesn’t, I roll my eyes.

She takes my cigarette and after stealing a drag, stubs it out. Her finger pushes the frames back up her nose. “You should really see someone about that bladder problem.”

“Bladder?” I ask but then realize, “Oh, right, the pissing thing.”

A silence draws over us.

“Alright,” I concede, even though I have no intent on following through. “I’ll try harder if you stop stealing my cigarettes.”

“Deal,” she smiles, standing up and fixing her skirt.  Before she walks away, she pulls a folded sheet of paper of from her pocket. “Oh and try to come up with some better excuses for missing tests, okay? I getting tired of hearing about the dying mother routine.”

My eyes widen at the exposure of my own lie. Unfolding the paper, it’s my midterm grades. I have D’s across the board and the words “IN DANGER OF FAILING” are next to each grade.

Shit. Sometimes I’m so stupid.

“And stop smoking,” she turns and yells from across the quad before she disappears into one of the buildings at the edges. “It’s bad for you.”

“I’m trying to quit,” I mumble in defense.

And fuck. I get it

I screwed it up.

sign on the door i

The sign on the door says “welcome to the future”.

Approach with caution. Momentum moves me through motions. My thoughts are redundant.

Now.

Off-campus party. Here, for a reason.

I tell myself not to fear what's on the other side.  The unknown.  The change.  The chance.

Don’t care what waits behind the door. It cannot be worse than what’s going on out here. A hedonistic sea of hormones. I label and dismiss it all.

The living room is packed with bodies that dance, twist, writhe.

The party, in the kitchen and living room of this off-campus, two-bedroom townhouse, continues in full swing. 

Drinking. Smoking.  A lot of pre-fucking. 

People bent over white lines of coke on a glass coffee table.  I listen to the shallow conversations. 

Economic theory: “The dollar is approaching the theoretical limits of its value. What happens next is anyone’s guess.”

I change channels.

Another one: “The media is all agenda. People own truth.”

“Lies.  Sheep.  Brainwashed flock. What has happened to you?”

Music from the speakers in the living room plays at high volume. People yell over the music in conversation. 

“I mean, most of the cafeteria workers are ex-cons, can we trust them with our food?”

“Milton got raided, earlier tonight.  They scooped up a bunch of students. Huge bust.”

“Building Seven. Explain that one. I dare you.”

The playlist is eclectic.  Rap becomes rock becomes trance becomes dubstep becomes house becomes rock becomes blues becomes metal becomes punk becomes rnb becomes country.  At least three people groan at the latest acoustic guitar.

Someone taps my shoulder and tells me to grab a cup from the kitchen. I turn to see who it is, but they are already gone.

//early i

 

 

The library. I stalk this girl. The one with the eyebrow ring.  Some phantom. I realize I was only in here once before. On a tour, senior year.

Swipe my card at the door. It is bigger, brighter, than I remember.

Find out from the work study guy. Some regressed-hippie behind the long desk near the check-out. He tells me about a secret study-room party.

“People do it,” He says.  “It happens at least two times a month.”

They throw him fifty bucks to run lookout up here for them and sort of pretend to turn a blind eye. That and they throw him some pretty sick painkillers. He's on them, right now. He chats with me.

“That’s great but have you seen her in here tonight?”

He digs his fingernails into the skin of his brow.

     Creepy Library Guy, closes his eyes.  He’s silent.  I wonder if he’s thinking or narcoleptic.

“I think,” he says.  CLG opens his eyes.  “I think I’ve seen her in here tonight.  Couldn’t say when, though.   Maybe she’ll be at that party.”

I’ve been searching the floor for her with my eyes, but at this, I turn and look at him. 

“What’s it going to take for you to tell me where the party is?” I ask.

“Twenty bucks,” he tells me.  His face is cool, set.

“You’re slime,” I say.  I’ll find it on my own.”

I head towards the stairs. 

“Best of luck, brother,” he calls as I go.

meta vi

     I know exactly what the future holds. Because I think, I know.

     We are all just works of fiction. Different genres sure. But words.  All words.  Fictionalize.

     Two dimensions.

     A contrived, constructed character in a sea of billions.  Every aspect of life has been formulated and explored to bring about a desired outcome. Nothing is allowed to be random.

     Never.

     Always.

     The cold clouds' foreshadowing forebodes troubled seas and impending violence.

     Just an end to the means.

     And all characters who know they are characters desire only to escape their stories.

oh naturale ii

The squirrel, black and sleek, frantically runs circles up and down the trunk of the tree. It’s been at this for hours occasionally switching trees, as part of some scouting method or tribal dance.  But food is scarce, I guess, and the small creature’s efforts are in vain.

     It’s cold now.

     December looms.

rhombus i

“Language is the great American skyscrapers,” the exchange student from Spain, Barcelona, tells me.   “Sleek and compact and built on top of itself, extending upwards and outwards forever.”

     I tell her, “I don’t see it.”

     And she says, “You're holding it wrong.”

     Rotate the page.   Change perspective.

     “Otherwise, it’s only toppled giants.  Dying.”

     Expire at the end of the month.

in-treat-ment iii

“You do understand there is nothing that I can do for you?” Loomis asks me, straight faced.   

     He looks up from his desk a little and shuffles paper back into a file.

     “I get that.”

     He asks, “Then why do you act surprised all the time?”

     “I don’t know. I guess, I just expected a little more.”

     “You can’t when you’ve already given up.”   Loomis tells me, “That seems a little unfair.”

     “There is not seems.”

     “Ask yourself, why you’re here. Why you bother?  And the answer is too simple to be true.  When was the last time you've spoken with your mother?  Your father?  Your friends?  Don’t you wonder how they are doing?”

     “I do. I do wonder.”

     “But don’t you care to find out the truth?”

     “What is, truth?”

     “We are not having that conversation, we’re having this one,” he says.   He presses the issue.  “Answer the question.”

     “I can’t care.”

     “And why not?”

     “Won’t allow myself to have my worst fears confirmed.”

     “And what is it that you fear?”

     “Clowns.”   I wait for a laugh that doesn’t come, doesn’t break the tension.  “I don’t know?  You tell me.”

     “Only you can name them.  Naming implies dominion.”

     “Been reading the bible?”

     Loomis waits.

     “I’m afraid.  That none of it matters.  That we leave no mark. That I can imagine a life and go through it how ever I want, because it doesn’t matter.  No one knows, understands.   They’re all caught up in their own heads.  Why would they want to?   They’re too busy pretending some other way.”

     “That doesn’t make any sense.”  

     Loomis shakes his head.   He takes a drink from his glass of wine.   It’s nearly empty.

     “Dismissive,” I warn.

     “Fair, he says.  “But you need to seek context when you lack it.”

     “Agreed,” I say but I’m not sure what it is he's saying.

     “Empathy,” he tells me, “is a two way street.”

     And now I know he's a quack.

     I smile, amused, and wonder if he's being sarcastic.

debris ii

     There’s bleakness to the dorms at four in the morning. Arctic.  Gray.

     There’s calmness.

     The illustrated illusion of aftermath. The lost hours. When most are sleeping.

with a chance of i

And then it rains.   Cold.

We haven’t had rain in months, someone’s saying.

self fulfilling prophesy.

Think people will hurt you. Fear they’ll leave.

Get mad.

Treat them like shit.

And push them all away.

Give them every reason to leave.

They will.

debris i

“You’re high right now aren’t you,” Kathy asks me.

She feels my forehead. Looks into my eyes.

“I don’t even exist right now.” I tell her.

“Perfect,” she groans.   Kathy starts picking up clothing from the bed and piling it all on the desk chair.

“You don’t get it we're all insignificant.  Nothing matters.”

Her face wrinkles.

You don’t make any sense when you're high. She strokes my hair.  It’s like your conversations are elsewhere.

Truth.

oh naturale i

Swat at a bee.   It suddenly appears in front of my face.   And it’s gone.   I turn, look for it.  Flown off.   Was never there. 

good mourning, moratorium iii

 

 

So what?  

 

You don’t like the decisions you’ve made, the person you’ve become.  

And sure,

you could describe it as

self-destructive,

suicidal,

passive aggressive

whatever,

but it’s not that simple.  

 

You put yourself in these

impossible situations,

casually inviting disaster in,

and you do it

with a smile.   

These disasters are pristinely orchestrated .  

The same hands

turn the key,

push the button,

delivered the killing blow

to those who you should have been proud to call your

true friends.  

But you didn’t call them that,

did you?  

Wouldn’t allow.  

Is it this you find yourself truly regretting, now?

 

And of course, there’s a reason for all of this.  

No,

it’s not because mommy and daddy didn’t love you enough

or the convoluted fact that the other kids picked on you when you were younger.  

No,

the reason is a much more selfish one.  

 

Every job you couldn’t hold down,

every relationship you’ve let crumble and die,

every sweet, star-struck girl you’ve ever made cry:

it’s all for the same reason.  

 

You see, it’s not that you have it out for yourself,

that you secretly want to see yourself fail,

ultimately.  

 

You don’t consciously booby-trap your life because of a self-loathing obsession with failure.  

 

You do it all to see just how much shit this pitiful excuse for an existence of yours can really take.  

 

Like a kid playing with fire,

you hold a palm over the open flame

to see

just how much

pain

it takes before eyes start to shed tears.  

 

But who’s crying?   Them or you?  

 

It doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things.   It all comes out the same in the wash.

 

The small cracks interest you not.  

You want to know how many times you can drop something before it finally ceases to function.  

But you don’t really want it to break,

in the end,

even though that is the goal

to which all of this

has

been

building,

because,

                   then,

the game would be over.  

 

And it has never really been about crossing the line, but simply about seeing just how close to it you can get.

Since expectation and reality never meet, you can, instead, expect nothing and, therefore, never be disappointed, never find yourself haunted with this ugly regret.  

 

Let go.  

 

You will only be pleasantly surprised. 

And seriously, who doesn’t like surprises?

good mourning, moratorium ii

 

 

But you can’t enjoy anything. 

                Can you?

Regret never allows. 

 

In this attempt to bid farewell to one thing, you have forgotten to welcome another.  

And so,

the time has come for some re-evaluation,

hasn’t it?  

That regret is rearing its

snot-nosed,

ugly head

again,

     isn’t it?

    

Then there’s this list

of all those hopes,

your dreams:

what

they

are

and

how

        catastrophically

you have failed them,

because in the end it is you failing them and not the other way around.  

Let’s be clear.

     You’ve taken, what, four years away in refuge from this Podunk little town.   Isn’t that enough?   Presidents change in that much time.   Lives are loved and lost in usually less.  

God

needed six days

to do His whole creation

thing.  

Jesus,

think what he could have done

with four fucking years.  

So, it isn’t too much of a leap of faith to expect life to have kept on without you,

for things to have shifted,

altering, the ripple-effect.  

     Why then do you find everything more or less exactly where you left it as though this entire place has been on pause while you were gone?  

The lives of people you’ve grown up with, were raised by, worked for, learned from, laughed with, loved, and hated have simply ceased to exist in your absence.  

 

Expectation versus reality.

     And, well, nothing’s changed.  

Sure, a few houses have been remodeled, some individuals have less hair and some have more, some have gained weight while others lost it,

but fundamentally

nothing has changed.  

The clothes you wore in high school still hang in your closet.   Your backpack has not moved from the spot on the rug on which you dropped it on your last day of classes.  

Parents still eye children with those same fake, nervous smiles.

     Strangely, there is no dust on any of it or any of them.

 

     You’re not the same person,

so why should

they

be?  

 

All you keep thinking is,

“It seems like just yesterday -- ”

and each time the absurdity of this entire situation prevents you from finishing the thought.  

 

Perhaps this regret gives way to a second chance.  

Maybe everyday is a opportunity to vanquish those mistakes of old.  

Are there not some things which cannot be undone or mended or completely forgotten in the wake of time?

 

     Then there comes the realization,

an answer

in the form

of a question:

If everyone acts like they did and nothing’s really changed,

are you then,

by association now,

the same as

you once were?  

Are you unchanged?

     Just as quickly as this moment comes, maybe you notice some more recent scars seem to be faded more than they used to, maybe you breathe a little easier and start to feel young again, maybe the clock starts to turn back to a simpler, more innocent time,

and maybe

this whole thing is starting to

drive you crazy.  

 

     Newer memories are slipping, because everything’s been getting so fuzzy lately.  

 

Was all you’ve done, everything you’ve become for nothing?  

Was your regret misdirected?  

Is it not growing up, never growing up, which you really fear?  

And it’s killing you

just the same.  

This regret

with a different name.  

 

You had your chance at escape and took it, but now for some reason which you’re having an increasingly difficult time remembering,

you came back and staying means a slow and painful death sentence at your own hands.  

 

It’s like ink in your mouth

and it stains

in all the same ways.

    

That woman, middle-aged and unaware of her own imprisonment, sitting across from you at a bar,

asks,

“What’s a boy to do?”

     Do you rebel and leave?   Abandon regret and chase some intangible dream. 

Can you, even?  

Since that’s the obvious choice, the one everyone expects you to make, do you then rebel and stay?  

Abandon regret and learn to see the things right in front of you.  

The things ahead.

Decisions, decisions.    

Expectation versus reality.  

The fate of your parents and their parents.  

 

Are you mature enough to make the difficult choice, the selfless choice, the stupid choice, the utterly and completely idiotic one?  

My God,

can you be any more

melodramatic?  

 

It’s really that simple.  

Start a fire and walk away.  

Watch it burn from a hillside or at a safe distance, on a TV in a different bar somewhere.  

Stay.   Go.  

What difference does it make?  

No matter where you go, your life will ultimately reach the same outcome.  

Will there always be regret?  

Is it, then, something unavoidable?  

 

You’ll be miserable here in much the same way you are miserable everywhere else.

Because you see,

it’s not them,

you

self-centered

little fuck.   

You 

are the problem.  

It’s you and your own self-destructive flaw of which you have now and forever condemned yourself.  

 

Misery loves company and company, thy name is

you.

good mourning, moratorium i

You get through it all:

 high school,

college,

and ultimately find yourself spending an increasing number of sleepless nights looking back, wondering

what happened

and

at which point

you

went

wrong. 

 

You cannot quite put your finger on it, but the entire experience closely resembles what the others might call regret.

Where were all the parties, the countless, faceless, drunken co-eds waiting and willing to be taken to bed?  

The expectation and the reality never seem to meet.  

The books and movies have been so misleading.  

All stories are lies, not to be trusted on some level.  

Nothing is ever as good as you build it up to be in your head.  

Nothing ever prepares you for this heartbreaking disappointment.  

 

And maybe that’s the problem.

 

Now,

straddling

this line

between

two worlds,

with one leg

in childhood

and

the other

in the land of adults,

you’re faced with nothing

but the subtlety of regret.  

One foot

past,

one foot

future,

while

the present is

fucking you

up the ass

because suddenly, there’s no more time remaining to make

bad decisions,

choices without

real consequences,

the free-bees,

the do-overs.  

 

The time to say goodbye to what it truly means to be young has arrived, bursting through a window and not the door through which you were expecting.  

The personal catastrophes you’ve been saving up for, experimentations with strange new drugs and multiple sexual partners have all been missed, some how, while you were

waiting,

stalling, 

biding time.

Your designated “fuck-up years” have come and, just as quickly, have gone by without you even noticing.  

 

Given the chance, what would you change?  

Because, of course, now, life matters,

your choices affect the future,

and nothing you ever

secretly wanted

to do

can be

done.

 

Your choice was a path, the safe one, and you traveled down it, hoping all the while that something better, something far more exciting would stumble upon you.  

 

Making no moves,

taking no risks,

you planned,

hoped,

and prayed

for the universe’s great revelation,

when the sky would open up at sunset and rearrange the cosmos of your pathetically bland existence

without you having to even so much

as lift

a finger.

 

Sure, you only chose this life out of spite towards parents, teachers, and everyone else whoever made the mistake of expecting anything other than banality from you.  

You did it all,

though you’ll never admit it,

to yourself.

Patience is a weakness.  

Expectation

versus

reality. 

Coasting creates a trap,

this snare of misery tightening around your throat.  

 

So, enjoy what you end up with:

 

buried

in a job

you hate,

married

to a person

you do not love.  

 

It’s your life,

your mess,

your neat little pile of bullshit.

 

And

you are so fucked.

 

Enjoy.

 

sketch of stations cross i

      The Davis family used to run this town.   Three generations, however, had seen to the erosion of that once iron-tight grip on the reins which steered the horses who pulled the town towards John Davis’ vision of the future.   Celebrities in their own rite, the family represented our very own brand of aristocracy.   Big J.D., the now long-dead grandfather and patriarch, presided as the assumed head of the town council for a record thirty-two years, shaping the way of life to which we have now grown so accustomed.  

            There’s a fucking Little League field named after him, for god-sakes.   The man was this town.   You can still see his thumb prints if you look closely at some of the older buildings.   He shaped and influenced and molded all of it.

            The sons, of whom there seem too many to count, emerged in every profession, every facet of this community.   There’s the priest, the lawyer, the real-estate broker, the army brat, the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker.   All sons.   All behemoths of their industry.  

            Since no royal family is without it’s share of scandal, the entire clan has seen its share of better days.   Their names dominate small-town gossip.   Which one was arrested for what?   Which one has the drinking problem?   Which one struggles with which drug?

            The private tragedies of the Davis family are exhibited on public display for housewives and teachers to discuss at PTA meetings, for drunks to gossip about when the TV at the bar has shitty reception, and for faceless crowds of people to whisper among the pews on Sundays.

            And with this, the whole town is changing.   The commerce building. The board hall. The VFW.   This is not the same place John D. Davis helped create more than half a century ago.   The old guard is weak and the last remnants of their power has all but faded into obscurity, remaining only as the subjects of off-color gossip and hurtful jokes.