Saturday, September 11, 2010

i think human behavior is funny when someone says they dislike you because you drink, or smoke, or drive too fast, and have a blatant disregard for your own life. it makes me think: "who are you to judge me and my lifestyle? it doesn't directly involve you, so step off."
but then i start thinking about this and realize that at that "Time" it did directly involve them, and they were only worried about me, so i can understand it.
       but then when someone does stop drinking, smoking, driving fast, and learns to live his life a little on the normal side, not every night is a blazing red coal in the fire, he calms down a bit. it seems like those same people who remarked on your previous destructive behavior are the same people that say, "fuck, you used to be so cool and so much fun, what happened?"

so if i 'm filled with madness, you want to be around me? mother nurturer.

but once i got my shit together, you don't want to be around me?

seems like it's better to keep my shit together, i don't like people like you around me anyway. people like  Henry, people like Stacey, you're all somewhere else,

and i'm still right here.

Tuesday, September 7, 2010

Greyhound Terminal Blues

     the door creaked shut and i watcher her brown hair with the long blonde stripe walk away. her backpack jingle jangled the whole way to the entrance. it was getting late, almost midnight, and i didn't trust any of those fucks hanging around outside, so i watched her walk her way into the building. i grabbed my cigarettes because my nerves were shot, my trembling hand reached up and placed it in my mouth, i fumbled around for my lighter, and as i was sparking it, i saw her turn and wave. she then disappeared into the building.
      each time i dropped her off at the Greyhound terminal down on 7th & Alameda it was always the same. we spent what last few hours we had in my bedroom having the most intense sex of my life, then we would talk for a bit, or just sit there quietly entangled in each other's arms starring up at the ceiling. i would try to talk, and she would just shush me and tell me to enjoy the silence. i did.
      i felt nervous for the both of us, the momentum rising with every tick of the clock. it was like being an inmate in prison ready to be transfered to death row. each second was a nervous wreck, but once you were transfered you calmed down and accepted your fate. the inmates had it worse than i, and i knew this, but still my body convulsed with anxiety. i let it do it's thing.
      i drove out of the terminal and onto 7th street up towards the freeway. the cigarettes weren't doing it for me, and i knew that the bars near my house were closed, so i went on a mission to find a place to drink downtown. i hung a left on Hill and then a right on 2nd. i stopped off at a small bar and walked inside. off the cuff i saw a woman dressed in red sitting at the bar, that looked like a good of place as any to settle down. i wasn't looking for a lay, but at least if anything she'd make some conversation to entertain me. the seats were real close together, and as i slid into the stool, i asked her if anyone was sitting there, she replied no with a surprise on her face, we couldn't of been more than six inches apart, the situation was awkward for me, but she handled it well. i dropped a twenty on the bar and ordered a scotch and a beer chaser. the bartender was this cute little Australian job with flowing blond locks. i settled in for the long haul and rested my elbows on the bar, starring off at the bottles and thinking about the woman i just left at the bus terminal. whenever she left i always got the same feeling. desertion laced with unabridged happiness. it was a shitty cocktail to drink, but finished well.
      the band was doing alright, a few guitars, a drummer, a wise cracking singer, and an upright bass player slapping it sometimes when the feeling was right. i gobbled down my first round and ordered a second while i still had a little left in my cups. the bartender eyed me suspiciously and then poured them out. this time the scotch was a heavy pour. it felt right. i grabbed a straw from the bar tools and worked at it with my teeth for a while, folding it over and chomping down to burn out he anxiety that the woman left me. the second round of drinks kicked in and i sat back to enjoy the music.
      i thought to myself for awhile about writing out the story. and i almost did, there, at the bar, on the cocktail napkins with my sharpie, but when i popped the top off and stared scribbling, the woman in red next to me was scribbling as well, into her own notebook. she caught my attention and i watched her causally going through the motions. i set my marker down to see the process happen, and i watched like a hawk. she would write, then look up and to the right side of the bar, roll her eyes, fuck the air, lick her lips, then go back to writing in her little notebook. i loved watching the process of her figuring out just where she wanted to go with whatever it was she had going on in those pages, so i settled in and watched her work. when she was done, i picked up my sharpie and wrote a message for her on one of the cocktail napkins.
"It's tough as nails,
but you've got to keep trying.
i understand."
     as she turned to put her notebook back in her purse, i floated the napkin near her beer without her noticing. she ignored it for a while, but when she finally reached out to take a drink, the black text caught her eye and she read it a couple times. She turned to me and i nodded and sipped on my scotch. she smiled and turned to me. i leaned in close enough to smell her hair, she smelled like apricots on a ripe summer day, and she yelled over the band into my face,
"the hardest thing to understand is clarity"
"Fucking A".
     then she downed her beer and patted my shoulder walking out of the bar into the foggy city. i sat there for a bit and thought some more about my woman on the Greyhound bus. i thought about her scent, her smile, the way the light came in through the blinds and reflected off her face as she was riding me. the way we both understood the world in the same context, how we understood each other, and how we could speak the same language with brutal honesty. that's the hardest thing to do, is be completely honest with somebody without having them become defensive and start crying. i hated that because it made me feel bad for expressing myself, so i thought it better to crawl inside and let it out some other place. but not this woman, i could easily tell her she was being a bitch and call her on it, the same way she called it on me when i was being a dick, and with that, i grew uttermost respect for her above the fucking, above the loving, above anything we had, it was truth and respect for our given space. that my dear friends, you cannot put on a anniversary card and you cannot make that kind of shit up, no matter how awesome you think you are. 
      i drove home and started putting the story together in my head, but i knew that if i started planning before i sat down that it would lose it's interest. i drove straight ahead and landed at the taco truck. i ordered a burrito of tripe and carnitas and sat on my hood eating it. i picked at the radishes i had in a bag drenched with lime and salt and kept thinking about whether or not i wanted to write this out. i cleared my mind and enjoyed the burrito. some people in the car next to me were getting into it, and i could see the steam collecting on the windows, through the back window i could see this girl's head bobbing up and down as the guy laid back with both his arms across the seats. i watched them out of the corner of my eye and wished him luck. i laughed inside at how it would seem normal for me to be watching this, this here, in my frame of mind, but for other people it may seem disgusting or unreal. i had that kind of luck, i got not the shit end of the stick, but more so the interesting end of the stick that was ignited. some people had all the luck, but no life, i had some luck, and some life, i was ahead of the curve.
      when i got home the streets were filled with cars, so i parked a few blocks down and walked. these nights always felt the same, when i left the woman at the terminal, i would feel anxiety, then relaxation and release, then clarity, and finally, when i got home and dropped my keys into their respective bin and bolted the door, i'd sit on the couch with the lights off. i felt empty inside. i felt drained. i felt as if a piece of me took off and i wasn't whole again. somebody hit reset on my controller and i was forced to start over. i would sit there and listen to the night for awhile, and then slowly put myself back together, and once i felt complete again, i would get up and go into the room to write. i'd sit in my chair by the window, with the blinds open, and the cool air coming in. i'd sit there under the lamp, in the silence surrounded by books and start over again. i'd sit there and know that whatever just happened was important, and if someone could get that far into the blockade, than i was still human. i still felt empathy, i still felt sympathy, i still felt courage and fight. i was still alive, and even if the night was cool and silent, the hills burned with fire and the ash collected in the air, at least in my eyes to go on. 

Sunday, September 5, 2010

nobody likes you.

De-constructing EchoChrome

       I was never a big gamer growing up. the last game system i owned was a Sega Genesis, and even that took major pleading and begging from my mother. i brought home all those good grades she wanted, i mowed the lawn with a push mower for a year straight every weekend. the push mower was this big deal with rusted blades and wobbly wheels. it took twice as much force to push that thing now than when it did when it was new. i sprayed some WD40 on the wheels and blades to get them going, but my dad thought it built character to work hard, so he started hiding the lubricating sprays from me, so i had no choice but to secretly lubricate the mower late at night with cooking oil. while other kids were out playing hockey in the street, or shooting jacks, or marbles, playing pogs or showing their private parts to the neighborhood slut, or whatever it was that they did, i was in the backyard pushing that goddamn mower every saturday morning just so i could get my hands on a 3 button controller with a direction pad. i could hear kids laughing in the street as i pushed that mower up and down our backyard which ran at a slight incline. down i'd go, rushing away with fury, and then i'd make the turn and go up that small hill. i wasn't even smoking cigarettes then, but as i reached the top of that small incline i would be gasping for air, all the while, i'd hear my neighbors mad with laughter over the high fence that i couldn't see. when i was done with the push mower my dad would have me get down on my knees and go around the yard cutting the edges with a pair of scissors. he was big on attention to detail and doing things the right way the first time. i specifically remember one random day that he was out organizing the backyard (he was a plumber, and our backyard had a section that looked like the graveyard for kitchens, bathrooms, and anything you could guess.) i had enough that day, i wasn't going to mow the lawn anymore. i let the push mower fall to the ground and yelled out as loud as i could, "this is fucking bullshit!" he dropped a bundle of pipes on the grass and walked over to me. this big, 220lbs man with fingers as thick as sausages and shoulders broader than a linebacker starred me down. He came close to me, and i could smell the beer on this breath as he towered over my small 12 year old body.
"What!?"
"I said, This is fucking bullshit!"
     it's funny when someone punches you in the face, you don't feel it for the first couple of seconds, and you slowly start to get pain growing. my face burned and my eyes started to water. i tumbled backwards and fell literally head over heels. When i stood up, i spit the blood out of my mouth and picked the mower back up, forever forsaken to my damnation. there was no way out then. i guess this was growing up, working for what you wanted, being alone in your hell only to get a small piece of paradise.little did i know then, that even after i had my Sega Genesis, i would still be mowing that lawn late into my teens.
      After that round of bullshit i never wanted a game system again. i would still mow that godforsaken lawn, but instead, at then end of that long haul, i would grab a book from the living room and sit outside in the grass basking the sun. i no longer wanted to go out and play, that was a dream forgotten, but i much rather enjoy pushing the outside world out even further and retreating to my head. even when i got the Sega Genesis for my birthday it wasn't a big thing, i played it for awhile and then let it sit there collecting dust. it felt like a waste of time.
       flash forward to 13 years later. i live in an awesome apartment that i share with my brother, and i have enough money now to do whatever the hell i want. i can drink fine whiskey, eat good food, and swoon beautiful woman. but all those things involved other human beings, and we all know how i feel about humans. so when the opportunity arose to purchase the Playstation 3, i jumped at it and never had a second thought (date 2010).
       i'm not one for role playing games. as i think it's just a virtual world for you to get lost in and dump all your problems at the doorstep and never come to terms with them. i don't feel like leaving all my shit outside and feeling better about myself by zoning out on World of Warcraft or some other bullshit time wasting game. i wanted a game that was unique and would challenge me. i wanted puzzles and mazes, i wanted to use my brain for more than wondering if the "magic cloak" or the "sorceress spell" would work better on defeating the gnomes.
       and then i found EchoChrome. i could explain it to you, but if you're worth your salt you're gonna google that shit and figure out the explanation for yourself. if you're lazy and don't feel like doing so, then i suggest you stop reading now, as i don't have any sympathy for somebody who hasn't got 5 minutes to Wikipedia it.
     go on, look it up, understand it a bit.
     it was late one night, i had a nice bottle of scotch next to me and i was on a roll with the game. i laughed at how much time somebody could take to put the puzzle together and i could solve it in under 5 minutes (averaged). i started to think about the game in terms of life, and came up with a rationalization that didn't sound halfway crazy.
      in EchoChrome you don't direct the character, as he walks in the direction he wants as much as he wants, but rather you manipulate the environment to have him reach his shadow. i know it's pretentious to base life on a stupid video game, but i felt that i'm on to something here.
      i spent a long and hard time looking at myself and working to make me a better human. humans are so shitty, we fuck a hole in everything, we're controlled by greed, we lie, cheat, steal, manipulate and work every angle to get what we want. and even if we don't know it, we're controlled by our nature that's been programmed into us by our parents. once you know all of these things, you can start taking yourself apart and putting yourself back together in order to make those right choices, in order to find truth, in order to speak out against the bad humans, and embrace those good people. the argument against this is how do we know who the good people are? i could give you a long list, but if you're reading this shit, then more than likely we share the same thoughts and you halfway can understand what i'm saying. i don't have to spell it out for you.. if you don't know what i'm talking about then you probably should start using the paper these words are printed on to wipe your ass, because no amount of words will ever change you. YOU SUCK!
     anyway, to bring my point home. Once you feel that your humanity level is high enough to understand your environment and the people around you, then it's time to stop feeling bad. you are that small man in EchoChrome  walking the path. Instead of trying to accept people that you shouldn't even be around, it's time to start changing your environment and getting away from them, you'll soon see that you'll become a happier person by picking and choosing where it is exactly you want to be. you have to change those things to suit your needs, and if whoever it is only makes you feel bad, than that's the person you need to get rid of. Life is a house, you need to setup that comfort for you to feel good about IT without screwing other people over. the big one here is being considerate of other humans even if they are shit, but you've got to let them know that what they are doing to encroach on your life is bothering you. They are that small hole, and you've go to find a way to jump over it or block it out of your path. If you do happen to fall down that hole, just make sure that wherever it is you fall, there's a solid place for you to land on. The problem with comfort is that once you've established it, you get lost in it. So we're at the top of a triangle and you may very well tip over and fall into oblivion if you don't find that balance.
      In terms of myself, i have no problem being alone. But i know that if i'm alone for too long, my thoughts start to go off on these weird tangents and i very well may lose my focus along with my mind. The small group of people i let into my life gets smaller and smaller by the day. but these are people that i know are not full of shit and won't let me drown when the chips are down. i will never be comfortable and i hope to never stop fighting, but you fight with better energy when you don't have the energy suckers around you. for so long i had these bullshit women sucking at my teat of life, and i felt forever drained, forever angry, and forever cursed in my own hell. but all of that was my own fault for letting them get that far in. There is a wall here now, and several guards with shotguns, blow torches, pistols, grenades and every weapon you can think of. interrogations are an everyday thing. there's no way i'm going to let you grab a piece of me. i control this small world and can move the walls, move the holes, and move you out of the way if i want to. You no longer own me, as i don't own myself, i am merely walking through this shitty place we call a world, but i'm going to manipulate the environment to the proper degree in order to keep me moving. if you slow my pace, then i have no sympathy for you, as you are merely but a line drawn in the sand on a windy day. You'll be gone soon enough.
    
 

Wednesday, September 1, 2010

it was a plan formulating, we were carrying it all around, each in our own little cube, the three of us sat there with our laptops on our respective laps trying to find a way to plan out a city wide take over. we had huge ideas of places to go, places to stay, things to do, people to yell at and places to eat, but none of these thoughts seemed to flow out of our heads and onto the coffee table.

instead we elected to sit around and stare blankly into our computer screen and eat pistachios while listening to pandora on the big tv. We had been engulfed by entertainment and technology, and boy it felt good. i felt vaguely useless and distracted, almost like a Vicodin with a 5th of whiskey chaser. i slouched down in my chair and wondered if this is what it felt like to work at a clothing company or another wack internet based company where people sat around in their cubicles and stare into a computer screen all day. how the fuck can you get any work done? it's all so vague, so empty, all computerized and manipulated by fractals. You'll never get anything done.

i need something solid. pen and paper. vinyl or cd's. something tangible. everything else is too lucid for me. drive me home honey, i'm ready to rumble. 

Monday, August 30, 2010

Separation of State

my cock and balls are calling for you
they long for your warm embrace
they want to be held and fondled
and smothered in your face

my cock and balls are yearning for you
burning to be in your mouth
as the saliva drips down from your lips
and lands on the stripped, stained, comforter of my bed
and all the while
you stare at me with those big doe eyes

my cock and balls want to be held
in your hands, in your warm loving smell
they want to be nuzzled between your legs
as we spoon on that forgotten cloud
until they can't take it anymore
my cock and balls,
they want to scream out loud

my cock and balls want some action
they want to be apart of your party
be apart of your sex
to bathe themselves in your juices
wiggle between those luscious thighs waiting for you to call them in

and crawl

my cock and balls don't care what you've done
what you've said
what you are
or what you claim to be
they merely want you to fuck them
and squeeze the juice from the tree on my trunk
onto your face, your chest, your back, and anywhere they can reach

my cock and balls don't care that you're
empty inside
as long as those juices continue to flow
my cock and balls will be there for you
but me,
my honesty
my longevity to you
it never won't

Saturday, August 28, 2010

This Woman Named Denise

there was a woman i knew  once,
sometime last year
she moved away from here
to the Capital
to be  political.
whatever.
But this woman Denise
was an exception to my judgments about women in general.
I don't hate women
i've just seen time and time again
your repeated behavior
and while i could sit here
and point all of them out for you
i won't.
because that's just making it too easy for you
to correct yourself
i rather watch you slowly decline
like pulling the wings off a fly.
But i digress.
Denise,
ah yes,
she had these big round dark eyes
like an owl
and she'd sit across from me at breakfast
while we both drank coffee
and she read her newspaper
and i read my books
and i'd watch her peering at me
with those lovers eyes
over the edge of the paper
and it felt warm.
warmness is what we had between us.
she use to say to me,
"dame carinos papi"
and i'd rub the back of her head
and run my hands over her small sweet body.
Goddamn she was a good woman
sexy in so many ways,
smart, driven, appreciative, understanding, willing to ask for help, considerate,...
the list goes on and on
i was amazed at the time
because i was seeing her
and another girl (i didn't want to lapse when Denise left)
this other girl was dull
boring
unappreciative,
empty headed,
overly nice,
and demented.
i could go on, but i'll restrain myself.
(oh how i want to go on)
When Denise left
i said to her,
"You've screwed it all up now."
and she asked what?
"You're such a good woman that you've risen the bar for the others that will come after you, now i'm going to expect so much."
i kissed her goodbye
and i wrote her sometimes
i sent her a package filled with memories
and a cd.
i haven't heard from her in so long,
and i'm sure she has her own life
and i've got mine
but people like that
come across our paths
randomly
and seldom
you've just got to be ready
and keep your eyes open
 


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