pain or something like it

i can open myself up and sew myself shut
i know what pain can do to a person
i can keep my children quiet in church
i eat breakfast in the family plot
i am dancing alone on the edge of a knife

some people rewire their heads and pain turns into something else
something different but better
better than everything

and your pain is irrelevant because you don't understand
you don't understand how irrelevant your pain is
your grief feels enormous
but it weighs nothing
it weighs nothing at all

your grief weighs nothing at all
why doesn't that comfort you?

there is a demon that laughs when you cry
and he is I.

the beach

when you walk into the water of an atlantic beach there are waves
the first is the worst but they get more bearable as you go further from the shore
there's a shock as the cold water hits your crotch, your nipples, shoulders, neck
but then you're where you wanted to be and you are floating
you are moving with the current and you are powerless
you just float and the salt of the water makes you wonder what you'll cook for dinner

summer 12 revised

friends change and those you loved may not love you

the way you think they ought the way that you've

been trying hard to live so right so good

like kids, drunk, playing games they shouldnt play

because they never listened to the rules

so dumbly they get changed the game gets long

instead of seeing it to the bitter end

on home they run to eat in daddy's seat

yet he's not heading home nor will he be

you're him now don't you see you have his face

the lines etched in your brow the wrinkled eyes

the faces that you make at things too real

the things you lived avoiding, now cannot 

you bought some things you never get to use

or choose not to, the difference is too thin 

remembering all the ways you didnt change

but should have because hey, cmon, get real

one man can't stand alone against the tide

nor can five or eight or any amount

the artificial forces just as strong
as twisting cyclones clawing at the earth

leveling stone statues in their path

that's you you're stone you're now a cloud of dust

you fought to stay ahead the jostling crowd

and now you're getting crushed against the fence

alongside me and other lonesome dream-
ers eking out the reasons to survive

then pasting them on tiny glowing screens

and listening for a voice above the din

we monks without a creed preserving thoughts
for future generations to ignore

i handle evolution well but change
will knock me from my pulpit to the floor

i still prefer the continental drifts

to earthquakes and the changing of the year

to sudden cyclones spewing dust and dirt

but when did we start getting what we want

since when are we the masters of our fate

by clinging on to random slabs of wood

that used to be a bench in some great church

some old world institution built to save

us from the miseries i've rushed to greet

now sorrow just insults the ones i love

as if they aren't good enough for me

but whether they have seen it or have not

i've never been too keen on holding back

from scrawling out my misery to read

one day in happier times and laugh out loud

sometimes my heart is bullied by the seasons

and sometimes i get sad for silly reasons

silent protagonist

You have been kidnapped by a large force which your grace and dignity left you powerless against. There is a great beast who survives by devouring the happiness of others and it has chosen you because to it your joy is delectable. For years it has been building castles and ditches, enslaving tiny monsters to do its evil and I am destroying those tiny monsters and dodging their flames in underground caverns to reach you. I have died many times and am sure to die again and as soon as I am reborn you will have been taken once again leaving me stranded at the beginning of level 1-1 but our plights are not hopeless for I know where lie the magic stars and fire flowers. Princess know I am your knight and I am not weary.

this guy gets it

Hand 2 Hand blog: You fucked up, you trusted us

do you know what this is like

i'm learning to breathe underwater

i'm trying not to struggle
keeping it together
while my lungs tell me to breathe
but no
just let the water hold you
feel the current lift you up
and bring you down
you're helpless now
you're just a tiny bit of filth
what found it's way into the world of man
to flounder like a dandelion blown
from god's last breath
so calm, and smell the breath of fate

.    .    .    .

it's scentless

Son,

Son, one day you will grow to be a man. You will know things you could have never imagined you would want to know.

You will learn the difference between want and need. You will ponder over what is want and what is need until the opportunity to select either has passed.

You will make mistakes and invite terrible people in your life. People whose personalities blossom into disfunction and error into which you can never intercede.

One day you will grasp the terror of the modern world. You will toil toward ends which are not your own. You will either covet or be coveted.

You will look over your shoulder for precedent and see the bridge to the past crumbling quickly.

And that is life. And though you are not eating grapes in a Mediterranean orgy you are also not getting scalped or dying of smallpox.

So cheer up.

i promise

it's like when you say "I WAS REALLY BORED SO I DID THIS"

yeah right guy

you were just lying on your bed with nothing to do or sitting on your couch

so desperate for a decision you did something creative

it was a crack in whatever pretense you're putting up

and you did something fulfilling

you took a chance

you went and bought colored pencils

but before you showed me that thing you want to be proud of
you wanna make sure it's ok

so you show me

but before you show me you say

'i was really bored so i did this'

and the first thing i think is 'well is it gonna suck because you

half-assed it or is it going to be worth a damn'

and you're all sheepish

like you're rolling down your panties in front of strangers

look pal

it's cool

i promise.

family

We used to play a game where he would pretend to be a cat when we were kids. He turned the computer into some weird screen that ran linux and i couldn't play games on it. There was always a computer in my life. I watched the internet grow up. I used a modem to call a friend to play DOOM with. I used a modem to connect to the internet to download pornography. I put naked pictures of girls on a disk that I brought home to watch with a program called cshow. the pictures were zipped to a file named Group-17. my brother called me out about it and i was afraid he was gonna tell my dad about it. i spent a large portion of my life hoping my dad would not find things out about me to avoid his disapproval. that shit means a lot to kids. but i get the last laugh because he thinks he's gonna live forever in a world without his sinner kids. he's still remarkably chummy despite it all. my relationship with him has improved since i got older but thats what happens, for the most part. sorry if you still hate your old man and hold everything against him. its easy. its especially easy if youre right. yknow, like if your dad hit you for dumb shit. i never got hit for dumb shit, or really hit at all. he did not spare the rod but he never like beat the shit out of me. some kids have dads who got off on beating the shit out of them. in that case, you are right about hating him. the fucker. but at the end of the day he was just some poor schmuck trying to get along. i don't care if he was a meter maid a garbageman or a king crab fisherman he was just some poor schmuck trying to get along. he deserves nothing but your pity. you can love him because you will gain something by learning to love someone who may not deserve it. so much stupidity is mistaken for evil.

the world is not a cruel place helmed by the devil. fate is not vengeful. fate is a bull in a china shop. it is the culmination of all our desires. its like watching low pressure centers on the weather channel. sometimes you're flush sometimes you're bust. the only noble act is love and one day your ability to love will sit in the driveway under a blue tarp like your dad's boat. look at that thing. he thought he was gonna take it out on the water, fix it up, feel the wind in his hair or on his head, finally be the captain of something, anything, make you and your siblings laugh like dummies. he was gonna do all that but instead he let it rot or sold it for college money.

fathers are precious because they are bizarre

genericist

i think the way other people think

the secret to success is accessibility

not singularity

do you want to be admired or adored

i mean honestly

One small step for man

The epitomizing event of the 20th century is the moon landing
We shot for the moon and landed on the moon after bartering a modest fortune for materials and research, compensated partially by an intricate sponsorship from the US government
All who were able watched it on television from wherever they were
images too amazing to be real
scenes we can watch on youtube whenever we think to (7 million views)
And to me it's not what we achieved but what we left behind
We left the ocean unexplored
We dedicated our efforts and sold out our cynicism to watch men in ties and white shirts build a machine designed to leave the world behind
We looked outward to gather information instead of inward to gather understanding
It was a heartwarming moment where government suspended institutional cynicism and embraced intellectualism, provided some very specific needs were met regarding national self image
a first kiss as an Act I sc. 1 to a comedy of errors where characters work diligently towards frivolous goals
toiling so hard that even when they triumph and gain whatever the hell they wanted in the first place you stand and applaud out of both pity and pride, a cocktail you enjoy until the bartender tells you what's in it
Shoulder to shoulder with strangers watching a man encased in technology gambol about the ultimate vacuum of a truly natural apathy
an environment that was very rationally and a little insultingly doing everything it could to kill them
We loomed over the heads of children from the armchair next to the lamp and fawned over the sum of all our competitive efforts

'Hey look at us
We did that'

Good for us

guhhhh

blame everything and do nothing

you couldn't if you tried

stand in the place where you live now face left think about your future wonder why you don't have one anymore

close your eyes and think about all the beaches that you will never see the warm sun the sand the water and how clean it is

think about that while you're doing something you have to do but don't want to do

think about the future

i have a feeling

i have bizarre unpopular opinions

i am the fringe candidate who does not receive the party's nomination and is forced to run as an independent despite his better judgment

maybe it's time to scale down the judgments and up the rhetoric

tell them what they would like to hear they will love you for it

or whatever, it doesn't have to be love necessarily

it's important to know what love is just in case you think you're in it and you're not

because you might not be in love

there are all sorts of relationships out there and some of them are actually terrible

the worse thing is to think you know

the ok thing is to know you don't know

the bad thing is to not know you don't know