The pharmacist at CVS says I am not prescribed an inhaler anymore.
so in it's place.
I prescribe myself cigarettes

I need something to inhale
cigarettes seem a logical alternative to inhalers

deliberatly I decide to not drive
to the cigar store.
i walk to the cigar store.

it is far enough to be inconvenient
which means maybe
If I am not destined to buy this cigarette
I will receive an overwhelming sensation to turn back

I always add time for potential divine intervention to my agenda.
It happens often enough to be logical

we may have different definitions of logical

the cashier asks my age
And I tell him 21.
I am 22.
somehow In the confusion of waiting for god to prescribe me an overwhelming emotional reaction to not buy cigarettes
Instead of an inhaler.
I forget a whole ******* year of my life.

this is great context for
How I trust myself when making decisions.
which is to say
I don't trust myself to make descisions.

I buy the cigarettes.

upon searching for the optimal location
to loiter and slowly **** myself.
I stumble upon the old teen center.
the first place I was a mentor.

Out the side of the building
There's this rock
Long enough to sit five or so children
two laying down.
it's Perferated like a candy bar
each rectangle curved slightly
custom fit to years of munchkin ****

this slump right here
this slump is my munchkin ****.

each break of chocolate
on the candy bar rock
has a ladyslipper growing behind it.
tips of the five purple flowers
stretch to align perfect with the tips of our childhood belly buttons

humbled, I brush the leaves
excavate delicately
this heirloom.
I had forgotten.

The sky is recovering When I lay myself on the rock.
light grey clouds that want to cry
an optimistic sun that won't let them

I Cover my face with an old journal
made of old book smell.
I smile into the pages.
my lips barely touching the silk threading of her binding.
I've never breathed so intimately
a new lover.
the tip of my nose tucked into her spine.
honeymoon phase, Intoxicating.
Still excited to be in love.

there's breath here
wisdom in the records of
loving young,
cherrishing this new book smell.
Filling your chest with it.

When memories are tangible
There are no more expiration dates

Fill my lungs with
the crisp of unturned pages,
worn leather covers
Soft silk crosstitches

Kiss air into me
from the space between your lines.
I know how intimate an untold story can be.

Today I started breathing
I fell in love With a metaphor.

I never did smoke that cigarette.

You ask me if having a baby in this world is selfish.

I imagine two stout bodied genderless dwarves.
with beards.
hand pumping a minecart down
subway tracks in Boston.

Hear the rattling
cart wheels along iron tracks.
the crackling fire of a lit torch
Illuminating an obvious macguffin
a glimmering maguyvery boulder
in the side of the tunnel.

This vision is a testament to how well I pay attention
When I have tunnel vision.

One pulled lever slows the minecart to a screaching stop
the dwarves zelda bomb their way inside

There is a man behind it
the size of a mountain
hooked up to a bypap machine
umbilical corded to a television

he does not know whether he is nocturnal,
trusts his wristwatch to tell time
Which was over $5,000 dollars.
trusts this watch
about as far
as he can throw his money away.
So He collects watches.

I ask you.
Does this man sound alive?

Do you think he more closely
resembles a metaphor
For children zombied into media leashes.
another pet to pitch in the graveyard
of working class
blades of grass leaning on the T
nodding off to sleep?

Or is he more like us.
escapists
wandering eyes
With roots in our mattresses
Shackled in the entertainment
Always breathing
inflating never creating.
or breathing out.

Would a child help us out?
would that be selfish?

breath can we still
tubes of oxygen up our noses.
can we rip out the catheder
save with will power
would a child somehow spin
eugenic honey
royal bee propaganda jelly
Would we see the world without sepia
no more screen filters
less headaches
less screen time
advil addiction.
Two less pills taken
comitted to attention.
stuck in tunnel vision
smoke and mirrors
are so shiny after blue pills

This mountain of a man
said to ask the man on the mountain
and I was so deep in my grave
I decided to dig down thinking
If This is hell I must be at the earths
molten core, so the road up
is just as long as the road
in any direction so long as i went straight.
But I change directions all the time.
And I still haven't hit the surface
And I keep building boulders
to keep out the cave rats
and making them obvious,
glimmerig macguffins so adventurers
will zelda bomb them open
and find me sitting here
watching the world go by
losing track of time
But always checking the clock on my wrist.
Because it's so beautiful
and biological.
The ticking is so loud
I'm deafened to the humming
of my oxygen machine.
the television,
screaching minecart breaks
My front door being blown open.
By zelda bombs

I'm stagnant with nothing but
my dreams and a metranome
Counting down to the day
I hate this television enough
To turn it off

Trust this clock enough to turn it back.

For a breif moment hear the
screaching subway tracks
The whirring of my bipap,
The bombs going off
not just at my front door
but all over the world.
blowing open my eyes to see finally

that life isn't worth a bomb shelter.
If I can't be selfish,

**** repopulting the earth.
I am going to paint drooping clocks
eat non-parishables ironically
and Die an honest man.

fell from her home
Skies of ohio
stumbled from a cloud
Grew her wings on the way down

hellboy in the back pew
cigarettes, blue dress shoes
closed her bible, "I refuse"
She said, "To be a mans property"

Honeybee
Honeybee
honeybee spread your wings
Honeybee
Honeybee
neither bird nor angel,
she flys free.

"I'll take the skills to cook and clean
our sneezes will still sound the same
I'll vist on holidays
but don't you ******* bless me"

"I'll be Domestic for myself
clean home and the best of health
Foster bees
a book to read.
But the bible ain't for me."

Honeybee
honeybee
Somewhere in the inbetween
honeybee
Honeybee,
apartment on deering st

she met me
at a speakeasy
"if you want me you better find me
Through the bookshelves I'll be waiting"

I turn the pages
Find her wedding ring
kept under the mattress,
not even god as a witness.


Doctor in ireland, she told me

escape in comic books
while he's away.

"Before we start, you have to know
One day I'll leave forever
Let's live a life we won't forget
In the meantime, together."

"I live with no one to respond to.
I live without boundary.
My ride or die resides in ireland
I'd like to love you while he waits for me."

Honeybee
honeybee
I've never tasted honey so sweet
Honeybee
Honeybee
Honeybee, Come lay with me

A few kisses later
cross legged in an office chair
sipping warm tea
I wake
green eyes watching me sleep
It's these moments
in between

Honeybee
Honeybee
were those mornings just a dream?
Honey bee
Honey bee
you leave

Remember me
in the old and green
honeybee
you were always free
guiness jogs my memory
The little things
inbetween

"There's a whole new world here,
and you're trying to debate who God is
Ignoring all the growing plants
And animals feeding on them
Turning a blind eye to the hunters, gatherers, and civilizations.
Look at the tadpoles

Watch how the blades of grass bend to the windchime lullaby through mountains like passengers on the T in
Boston

Witness detail before you try to figure out some black and white
yes and no answer.
Try empathy.

Discuss common ground
on where the rivers are,
which spiders are poisonous
which sliders just look that way.
Don't ever decide who gets to name
god.

Decide who gets to name the blades of
grass.

Agree on who names the spider.
You can name the trees.
I'll name the oceans

before you know it
this new world
has a place for both of us

and isn't that world more beautiful?"

Submissions to the Annual Musical Torture Experiment for 2017 are officially open!

Submit your five songs by emailing them to
TorturePlaylist@gmail.com

"BUT WHAT IS THE MUSICAL TORTURE EXPERIMENT NICK?"

Well me, I'm glad you asked.
The Musical Torture Experiment was started in 2013 by yours truely, Nicholas R Coulombe.
Where I asked everyone I knew, met, or saw on the street, to hand me 5 songs that I would add to one playlist,
listen to that playlist on a loop
AND NO OTHER MUSIC
for an entire month.

I have continued this tradition each year
recruiting Willing victims & voulenteers
to listen along with me.

These victims have many different lives, interests, and genre preferences,
but there is one thing they all have in common.

The blissfull escapism of living in their headphones.

This gaggle of Tune-heads who use their music as a fundamental life resource, a coping mechanism, an escapist fantasy or meditation.
These people offer their body and spirit to music.

Now, for a whole month, they are relinquishing control of their music.

Shotgun no longer shuts their piehole.

For an entire month.
Listeners will not be able to skip or select any music other than
YOUR SUBMISSIONS!

This is the perfect opportunity to force someone to really find whats so amazing about those artists we culturally hate.
Or maybe theirs an oldy that your grandkids Refuse to consider music because there is static or twangy voices instead of bass drops.

Maybe you talk about your love of skrillex and a hipster spits their kombucha in your face.

If you have songs that DESERVE the light of day.
This is your chance to indulge in their exhibition.

want to voulenteer yourself as tribute to listen along with these crazy *******?
keep tabs on what is being added cause you think its kinda interesting?
Or contribute YOUR five songs?

Just
Send an email to TorturePlaylist@gmail.com
by the end of August to participate!

Go check out the playlist itself here:

https://open.spotify.com/user/124409443/playlist/2TAdzDUKx7sfW1uJrqMS7K

A snake doesn't just throw shade
We thrive in the shadows
Stalking our prey,
Think you've got what it takes
We'll swallow you whole.

I dare the kittens birdys & roadkill
To make a mistake
You really think your house spits
poison Better than a snake?

Our Partsel tongue is "forked for her pleasure"
Each time we seal a letter
witches get wetter

other houses cringe at our fame
cold blooded killers

don't buy it? Just wait.
Our Snakeoil salesman
Will Have you beggin' for change

You dare to stand against a python?
You don't even know code

I can't pull punches
if I don't have hands, Bro.

Like medusas hair dresser
Expect-to petrify
Better call Cobra
Get insurance for your life.
What's the matter
Gonna cry?
Because We can't.
Ask science.

I dare you to challenge
My Reptilian brethren

We're Unhinging our jaw
getting fed like it's league of legends.

Collaborate on a spotify playlist that will play on shuffle in my casket after I go.
I want you to add songs you want me to feel the radio signals of.
We know we feel music with a fifth sense,
A full body ASMR tingle
Whispers of russian woman fixing our robot parts.
Well I can't hear you, speak, move or eat
But bones vibrate to soundwaves just the same.
Give my casket the best **** bass you can find.
Bass that will wake the dead.
Rattle me like an instrument the way you plucked strigs while we were alive
You have control over what i hear after I go
So you may play me music beautiful as we played in the space between our fingertips

Play spotify in my casket
Only you and those i trust have access to adding songs.

But don't add garbage music.
Because I swear, I will haunt you.