industrious.

All my favorite shouters are in rehab. No more hitchhiked tours or basement shows.
No more bruised acoustics, or frantic howls.
So I guess I’m all alone now.

The ones left breathing play in plastic coliseums, but that’s only betrayal. I’ve never had that kind of money and I guess that’s what it’s all about. But now I won’t be at your show, and I hope you miss me but I know you won’t. I didn’t think it could ever cost me so much, getting my ass kicked to a punk song.

So fuck off. There’s no such thing as a sell-out and we’re all trying to survive.
I know the others have dried up and died.

We’ve all killed the music industry.

as you are.

It’s too easy to feel fucking terrible. And the way your moods swing, it’s always too much. Your brain goes on overload and all of a sudden, you can’t breath - sure as hell can’t sleep - and you’d give anything to just make it fucking stop. Your veins throb and you bring your bones to your temple, pounding; you’re all too aware of how the angles fit just right, how the edges of your mind become ever more blurred, fraying like old fabric.

This is your brain off drugs. This is your life, right here, in front of you.

And you’d like to shout, to destroy something - anything - but you won’t because you can’t and you’re frozen as you are, an image of anxious agony. You’re furious and weeping and thinking too fast to follow, because this is how you live, but it’s also how you die. You can’t handle it - you don’t know how to - and it’s not something you can fix, or even change. It’s you, as you are, and it’s always too fucking much.

individuality.

He sat across the table from me, its pale plywood surface gleaming in the flickering light, and insisted with incredible optimism that tattoos could define someone. I disagreed venomously, but he reasoned diligently, gesturing towards the table to illustrate his point. He claimed that, like the table, appearances in terms of conformity were like a circle. When you were a teenager, you stood on the edges of the circle and, whether you dressed like a skater or hipster or a gangster, you dressed distinctively. He claimed that as we aged, we would unavoidably drift towards the middle, and begin to dress the way all middle-aged fucks dress, that we would begin to look the same, or to be the same. He claimed that tattoos could be permanent marks of individuality, that they could ensure that you never conformed to those around you. Essentially, he claimed that tattoos could both create and validate uniqueness.

The obvious problem with this theory is that it’s shallow, that it fails to realize that appearances never make you truly unique and can only make you stand out, which are too wholly different things. Deeper, however, was the disregard for dimensions, for how any premise of individuality can be altered greatly by the surroundings of this person. If there was a circle of conformity, I was sure that it was a fucking cylinder. What he was missing was that there were levels to this, that dressing like a hipster or a skater or a gangster might seem different compared to adults, but for his age and location, it was the most average mundane identity one could have mustered. The fact is, there is nothing even remotely special about a North American teenage or twenty-something kid with some tattoos or piercings. These supposedly edgy styles were just typical youthful rebellion, as monotonous and pretentious as ever. I don’t say any of these things with disdain for tattoos - which can be meaningful to a person or can provide purely aesthetic amusement - or for him. In fact, I found this simple and ultimately superficial belief almost endearing. It also seemed terribly hopeless and sad to me though, as if he and I were both trapped in the idea of who we thought we were, attempting to define and create our own identity but only really lying to ourselves, trying to prove our uniqueness and therefore our worth in such stupid, silly and meaningless ways. This was depressing, but it was no more depressing than my usual view of the world and its inhabitants. Still, for all my cynicism and contempt, I have never really fallen out of love with the place or its people. It still enchants me, if only for it’s bizarre complexity and beauty. The world has always struck me as very strange, but undeniably full of opportunity and discovery.

punk rock.

I like punk rock because it relieves me of my burdensome mind, my tendency to over-think and analyze and because, with punk rock, I find myself impulsive and savage. I like punk rock for the same reasons I like the drugs, and pain, and sex. But I guess that makes sense.

I can’t really describe what it’s like, being at a show; what’s it’s like to be moshing, my body bruising against sweat-coated limbs and chests, my vision blurred, the stink of beer and rum and pot, on my breath and my friends’ and the crowd’s. There, I am animal and instinctual and able to express my love and fury and passion in howling songs and fists-kicks. I am alive.

I’m not able to do this in real life.

My convictions remain but I have the new-found ability to rage over them, to believe that they might actually mean something.

For a night, I’m wild, brash in my actions, and a leader. I get my friends into trouble and they forgive me because I get them out of it, too. I feel like I am suited to the small, dark room. The brusque crowd. I’m not- not really, because I’ve never been brusque or confident and have only been reckless and half-mad with my own brand of intellectuality. Even there, I’m not quite right; far too reliant on my solitude and logic. But no one questions me and I am only a blurred impact, part of the crowd.

My ribs crack and I can’t hear my own voice over the band.

I guess, for me, that’s freedom.

god.

I am a confident atheist, and have been sure in my faith - or lack of faith - for many years. However, I was raised Catholic and, though I have no doubts that religion was and is a mistake, I often find myself sentimental about my childhood image of god. I can only compare this feeling to the memory of Santa Claus, a belief that I was loathe to relinquish, as it was a comforting one, albeit not very plausible.

Still, my memory often touches upon how I once imagined god to be - a rather unorthodox view, I’m sure, and certainly not akin to the icons commonly seen. My god, the one created by my child-self, had skin as green as a bottle, a deep lustrous color that, paired with his hulking nose, only reminded me of a frog. His eyes were great and white, and he wore a midnight-blue top hat, and a matching suit of velvet. In some of my drawings, he had fiery orange hair flowing out from beneath this cap. He floated amongst clouds and was a large, encompassing father figure that was not present in churches but in trees and songs and bodies of water.

Needless to say, my kindergarten teachers were perturbed, but more so, puzzled. This image of my own god, his garish colors and lidless eyes, is one of my earliest memories, along with the troubled faces of adults around me. But he stays with me, though I have long since regarded him as a mere childhood dream.

new books.

New books: Walden by Thoreau, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce, the Odyssey by Homer, Pygmy by Palahniuk and Sons & Lovers by D.H. Lawrence. Unfortunately, I promised myself that I would read no more than three books at a time.

I'm currently reading the Way of the World by Nicolas Bouvier (a sort of European On the Road; a memoir by Bouvier about his mid-50's road trip from Geneva through the Middle East and onto Asia... distinctively less self-important than Kerouac's, but with just as much exuberant detail and general awe at his surroundings), Future Shock by Alvin Toffler (sociology study about how rapid social changes and technological advances affect human psychology) and God Is Not Great by Christopher Hitchens (very biased study on general religious theory, history and purpose, though not quite as self-righteous as it sounds).

Having more than a little difficulty waiting to read Thoreau, though- I read the first couple of pages out of curiosity and could hardly put it down. But I know that if I start reading too many books at once, my bedside table and my head will become far too cluttered. I've done that many times and always found it's better to stick to three at a time, tops.

survival.

Can’t help but think of vivid orange bottles, scattered capsules, or plastic bags, and how it felt, air growing short, my mind numbing. So I duct-taped my mouth shut and covered my nose as well, and waited, my body convulsing, and all my willpower devoted to keeping my arms at my side. The first time I tore at it, breathed deeply. Replaced it and vowed to try harder, entangling my fingers in the sheets beside me.

How strange it was, to find my own body rebelling against my mind: my mouth contorting, struggling even as I willed it to cease, even as I pressed my hands against the mattress desperately. And then, the way it felt, the duct-tape giving away slightly at my tugging lips - that brief flash of hope, relief - and my hands leaping upward to assist before I forced them back down, fingers again clasping at fabric.

Time passing.

Growing dizzy, still gagging helplessly, the tape stretching against my skin, my muscles twisting. Hopeless until, with impossible suddenness, the barrier falling; gasping air and tape into my mouth, tasting chemicals and salvation. Gradually becoming aware of the tender skin revealed, the scraps stuck around my mouth and nose.

But again I know my desire to live, and the depth of such a concept.
I am an animal, and I must survive.

author/poet wish-list.

My author/poet wish-list:
(authors I've read but don't actually own the books of, and authors I want to read... the books excluded are ones I already own. Painfully few, but I'm broke, so no surprises there).

Ernest Hemingway
Henry Thoreau
Leo Tolstoy
Marcel Proust
HG Wells
Thomas Pynchon
Fyodor Doestoevsky
Kurt Vonnegut
Lord Byron
Allen Ginsberg
Walt Whitman
Chuck Palahniuk (except Survivor and Haunted)
Ralph Waldo Emerson
William Wordsworth
Victor Hugo
Charlotte Bronte
Sylvia Plath
Thomas Wolfe
Jack Kerouac
William Burroughs
Gary Snyder
Oscar Wilde
George Orwell (except Animal Farm)
Arthur Rimbaud
Pablo Neruda
Ezra Pound
TS Eliot
Jim Morrison (except the Lords and the New Creatures)
Dante Alighieri
James Joyce
William Carlos Williams
David Ignatow
Robert Duncan
Reed Whitemore
Howard Nemerov
James Dickey
Denise Levertov
Edna St. Vincent Millay
Muriel Barbury
Theodore Dreiser
Cormac McCarthy
Hart Crane
Henry Miller
DH Lawrence
Vladimir Nabokov
Noam Chomsky (except What We Say Goes)
Carl Sandburg
Chad Kultgen
Jim Harrison (except The English Major)
Nick Cave
Leonard Cohen

glacial.

my brother and I, aged ten and twelve-
sitting at the kitchen table,
with a hammer raised in his white-knuckled hand.

my mother at work
(six days a week, twelve hours a day)
and home late: us adventuring,
exploring and creating,
we know freedom.

the first hit comes down upon the old device,
whose innards we longed to see.

the first hit comes down and I think,
for a split second,
glass.

and then the second hit, and the shards,
peaks glittering towards the ceiling,
are magnificent and terrifying
as they fall.

an iceberg formed in the middle of our kitchen
with its fluorescent lights and plywood floors.

and my brother and I,
unscathed and surprised,

the toy forgotten in lieu of this catastrophic beauty.

thunder.

my teeth welding painfully:
the towering figureheads of family.

thunder without lightning.
the visuals are lost.

I can only recall: teeth against teeth
frozen feet. the world around me, exploding.

roaring forces - voices - the slam of
a swinging door. someone weeping.

but not me
with my eyes turned to
stone.

artifact.

ebony bones;
carved stone skin.

I'm not an artifact but
my eyeballs are scratched
and my tongue dry.

remember when you knew me
and when I knew myself.

on the wind.

so what am I then, if not a broken toy?
I long to be redeemed.

yet my palms are cracking,
and my brow
wet.

I am feeling indeterminable.
you are standing as if unseen, and aloof;
a note of music is on the wind.

statuette.

the whole world is blowing in
through my open window.
vacuum sounds-

the cat sitting, statuette,
in alarm; and I watching, guarded,
with my hands poised and
ready, for whatever

comes out.

misplaced.

I guess I'd rather know the truth,
so I can properly ignore it;
but if his wizened hand reached too far-
and I feel shaky, thinking of it-

I couldn't ignore this, though we don't speak aloud.

and my poor mother with her misplaced love
for a man whose wizened hand reached too far
under her daughter's shirt-
under her daughter's pants-

and I feel sick, thinking of it.

idle hands.

so idle hands and empty work;
no, I don't know what I want.

constructing an identity:
remember you're a fake.

and yet I'm yearning for some honesty;
simplicity. I'd like to live off hand-picked plants
and sleep by trees under stars.

maybe I will someday.

arched.

arched back under sick shame
marginal success, and then-
colossal loneliness.

over-run by an unnamed foe:
short on breath,
but breathing.

wrist bones.

sick with emotion, mid-night, sleep far-

the bones of my wrist
under veins, and taut skin
to my temple.

combating frustration with a drugged mind and frayed edges;
clouded sleep and a familiar pang.