well...

maybe i don't totally like the last thing i wrote but what the fuck it stays because i can play empty games that look like parallelism just like anyone else can. empty. just a little literary manicure. look ma no hands.

pain

i want to feel
i want you to feel
i want you to feel pain
i want to always feel pain
i want to be the hole in the dike separating the city and the ocean of pain
i want to grow until the city is flooded
i want to grow until i am as large and vast as the sky
i want to bathe every being in pain until there is no pain

what would that look like?
what is a world where everyone is suffering?
what would be different?

tell me about hell
tell me what hell is like
tell me what hell looks like
tell me what happens to sinners
tell me are they flayed or stretched on the rack
tell me who gets to torture sinners
tell me is it angels or demons?

why would evil punish evil?
why shouldn't good punish evil?

there should be angels easing the arms of sinners out of
their sockets
their limbs that cracking with a small burst of blood
there should be angels delicately driving spikes into eyes until they have confessed everything they have and have not done

god make me that angel
god heaven for me would be an ocean of pain so great and wide my own would seem trivial

it would get lost in that ocean
it is a gift i have not asked for
it is a cancer on my soul

you who have brought so much death
you master
you god who would kill a beast in the field but spare the beast in the home
you god who asks for the lives of infinite beasts
you whose necessity is another's luxury
you whose luxury some would not dare dream
you Caligula
you who are born in the city of high walls
you builder of dikes

i am praying for a flood one day that will wash us up to the eyes
i am praying for a flood of water painfully clear that will one day wash us up to the eyes
i am praying for a flood we can watch

watch the pain we have spared ourselves for so long
watch it lift us up off the ground into fire or ice

i am praying for a flood

something

now what. just put something down. you might not even have to use punctuation enough talking to yourself already you always feel like writing but never know what to write well take the plug out of your head and watch everything drip on to the paper. do you remember in new paltz when you used to get bloody noses out of nowhere? maybe it was the altitude, it definitely wasn't the coke because there was no coke. maybe sunday there will be some aderol. how do you spell that? what does it matter. what does anything matter. why do i have to write that in everything i write. anyways, do you remember the first bloody nose? it was you hovering over a chair looking at your monitor. that old computer you brought with you to school that just broke out of nowhere the way things just break sometimes. that old computer you probably have some pictures of tits on there still floating around in the great nothing that files go to when they're deleted. all just compressed ones and zeros floating out nowhere they don't exist anymore. well this was in new paltz, you were leaning over a chair and blood just started coming out of your nose and landing on the chair. that's not your chair, jeremy. that chair belongs to SUNY New Paltz. just some blood. a little blood won't kill anyone. well what i meant by talking about that blood was how it just dripped right out. you didn't even have to think about it. all you had to do was be in the right place at the right time. the planets were aligned. the trees outside had all their leaves in exactly the right position, every fish in every ocean was where it needed to be the stars were unseen behind the sunny sky but they were dialed in to what was happening and then a small little something opened up inside my nose and blood come out. not a stream, just a little bit. it was scary. you never did find out why or whatfor and that was a good introduction to the rest of your days. never really finding out anything. just making guesses. just looking at the stars and making up your own goddamn constellations because nothing they said ever really looked like what it was supposed to. the only thing you know how to point out is orion. well, good for you. the big dipper is up there somewhere. i know how hard the stars are to see, i'm you. the little dipper, who knows. i look up there i only see little dippers. 40 or so little dippers just banging around in the sky looking for a star to be part of the handle or part of the dipper.
so put something down on something. put some dots down on a piece of paper, bleed out your nose. someone will look at it and call it something. someone will say 'oh that sort of looks like a dipper. ooh there's another one that's even bigger. this will be the big dipper and the other one, that will be the little dipper. these will be the most popular things because the big dipper is so noticeable and it has a little brother somewhere. who knows where, the moon is too bright tonight'
this is just a little terrible something i will not apologize for. throw this bottle away there will be another floating along shortly with maybe something more consequential inside.
but don't hold your breath.

write every day

i know i know
write every day
and drink 8 glasses of water
and brush your teeth after meals

well i eat when i'm hungry
and drink water every now and again
and brush when my mouth feels filthy
and this will do.

The World Is Ending (April Fools)

The world is not ending
The joke's on you

Go back to your job
your room in whatever house large or small

The world is not ending.
I hope your stocks are untouched and your boss still doesn't know how you really feel.
You can still return the non-perishables.

The world is not ending.
That was a close one.

The world is not ending.
Now what?

The world is not ending.
You don't have to take back any of the nice things you might have said to your family members or coworkers you have only known for the past several years or months. They will keep them until the need to pad their deathbed, then they will be laid out like fine linens as the clouds part and their own personal rapture ensues.

In us there is an empty box you can fill with whatever if you know how to keep strangers away. This is for anything really, but I suggest you use it for words like that because it's so hard to get clean once the shit drops in.

The world is not ending.
The tedium and the minutiae is important once again.

The world is not ending.
Go wash your car.