But, what the hell 1-17-98
Deleted.
It's not something you can try to do.
You can't just try to write, and expect it
all to flow forth from your fingers while your mind fights for the words.
It was almost like a trance,
when I used to sit in front of that
long aged computer in college,
the wasted time I spent drunk,
disillusioned, with wonder at
what the world might hold for me
in a future that I was corrupting for myself.
I learned what it was like to glimpse love.
I learned what it was like to glimpse guilt,
I learned the values of immorality and subterfuge.
I learned to use people who could see,
and to reflect people upon themselves.
I learned it all, abused it from time to time,
wondered at the soft belly of these great sapeins,
wondered why they were so easily punctured,
raped, and thrown back in my image.
(It's flowing again… I'll kill that damned water spout.
My mind gets in the way too much…)
I've abused it for a long time, and grown arrogant in my abuse.
I've laughed at the nature of mankind
while I was sitting with the animals,
denuding a carcass ripe for the tasting.
Got it so well down.
Hunting like a hyena for the proper morsel.
Hunting like a hyena for the greatest laugh.
Laughing all the way to the tears.
There's been some problems. Some illusions.
Some deluded fantasies.
Ok, I've never really been in control of all this.
It's been a struggle to maintain a sense of togetherness.
It's been a struggle to hold straight the path that I chose.
Damned if I'm going to fail in that.
So focused on one damned sight, so determined for a goal,
that everything else becomes lost, becomes insignificant,
becomes a grand illusion of hopes and desires,
that allows a person to fuck over your world.
I'm still angry at that. But at whom.
I'm loath to admit that it's me.
I must say that I do not really know.
She was wrong. But did she know any better?
How can anyone live that way,
believe those things?
How can so many people see the truth,
and yet she walks away from it.
Fuck her. Too bad for her. Too fucking bad for her.
(I always swear when I'm lost and frustrated.)
No, I don't think I loved her.
I think I loved the idea of love.
How can a true heart love the gap of nothing?
How can a true heart accept pain and rejection
and live within a false world,
a world generated because you're lazy?
She was that object, she contained that valentine.
I never did give her a proper valentine.
Shit, she never deserved it.
I'd take back everything I ever gave her,
it was all so fucking false.
Damn myself for being so untrue.
Where is the false gap now?
Why did I stray from what I knew,
why did I go away from the truth?
We live in a place where sophistication
is a method the rich people use to pretend
that they're living in a world of polite company.
It's a method used to ignore war,
it's used to ignore bowel activity.
It's a method used to ignore real people
having real conversations about
real ways that people fuck up.
(A deep sigh and a pause before I can
continue on this one…)
I told myself a long time ago that
I wanted to be different.
I told myself long ago that I was a writer.
But I'm not really a writer
. I'm a thinker of random thoughts,
and every once in a while, a gem
breaks free of this coal mine.
It's just easier to type them on a computer
and show them to people later,
than to scream them at walls and know that
nobody will hear those words.
It's hard to figure if people mean what they say.
Is some of that stuff "good shit"?
Or is it all just "shit"?
I guess you could probably take all the
good stuff and compile it into one page,
flush away the rest of the crap,
and maybe I'd win an award
for finally figuring out that nobody gives a shit
except for those people closest to you,
who MUST give a care,
because you've tangled yourself
in their heart by some stroke of mad genius.
And you'd gladly do it again if you could
figure out how to tie those knots.
Always trying to explain away the most simplistic emotions,
Always trying to have the answers when just words suffice.
When will you dream again, great bear?
When will you listen to the poet,
and stop fretting about writing poetry?
I could slap you sometimes, you're such an idiot.
You sit and bitch and cry and moan,
but you can't figure out the lasting ways
of how life really treats you…
Of how you treat yourself through life.
You take thoughts and memories and break them
into pices of a Snicker's Pie
(saw that on a menu in the hotel)
and try to devour them in one huge gulp,
but a piece at a time.
It's what exists all at once.
It's what comes to you in a flash of
exploding light, exploding caresses
and dying breaths.
It's all about the simple things that you've forgotten
were once worthy of your mighty stencil.
The roses that flow softly down into the hearts
of mothers who wish their child best.
The hummingbirds that suck pollen from roses
so that other mothers might wish.
It's all about the steps you take every day,
ignoring the pain and anguish outside,
focusing on the knowledge of beauty and
the facts of love that are inside.
It's about filtering the world through a lens,
and then removing that lens to compare
what is real and what you see as real.
It's about those starry nights
old people wrote about,
that you had to write about them writing about,
that you never realized someone could write about.
It's about willow bushes you've never seen,
but you can write them down because you've
heard their metaphor, heard their song.
It's about long hikes with a wise man,
knowing that he'll one day grandfather your children,
and hoping they'll understand at birth
what took you so long to figure out.
And, deep inside, hoping your children
will look up to you the way you,
as an adult individual, look up to your father.
It seemed so glamorous,
this writing stuff,
all the kids were doing it.
I got quite good at it, I suppose.
Stomach angst and poor attempts
at logging your thoughts don't always work
so well, especially at 2 AM on a Friday night
when you're completely sober.
I shake my head with wonder at the past.
How could I accomplish such tasks.
How could I forge a path with such raw determination.
How could I ignore so much, yet accomplish so much.
So I probably focus too much on the negative,
and not enough on the positive…
But, what the hell,
I saw snow the other day.
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