There's comfort in discomfort
And love in being lost
There's thinking and there's knowing
There's fire in the frost

I find myself at the end of a short journey
Most everyday, these days, if I'm honest
And I find I don't remember the journey
Soon, I won't remember it happened
Even forgetting the ending to it
A journey to my friend's house or the store
It's all sand that was washed away
By the ever-forming tides in my brain

I wish the tides were more effective, obviously
Wash me away as a whole entity, cleanse the world
They say there's pain in forgetting
Which I guess would explain why I'm like this
I have a friend who used to say they were a cancer
It was when we were younger and I didn't get it
Maybe it was because of their zodiac, I thought
But now I'm older and now I get it

After about a week of deliberation, I see it now
This, in a sense, is a song or a tale
That, if you look closely, debates the ocean
A frightening and dark depth of immeasurability
Would it be a pop culture reference now;
If I were to say I'd see for myself
Or would it simply be a pretentious reiteration
Made in the poorest of tastes?

My best years are behind me, I tell myself always
Thinking "oh, how I've wasted my time upon time"
But I've been telling myself this for my whole life
So when the **** were my best years, really?
I am perhaps the most attuned I have ever been
Rather than a teen singing opera in the streets
I am an adult screaming into metal tubes
Pretending that one day it will make me a living
Stretching my body thin and disappearing under pools
Pools of sweat, blood and tears, in a manner of dramaticness
The sun burns my skin off and the salt in the waves irritates the exposed muscle

That previous line was too long and it didn't fit the scheme
But I think that sort of helps with the deranged nature of the prose I present
I say to myself as I keep writing lines that are almost as long as that one

What the **** is rock music?
People tell me "oh I don't follow what goes on with rock music"
Or they ask me "what kind of rock music do you enjoy?"
But then we're counting Elvis Presley and Les Rallizes Dénudés as the same genre

Rambling on as usual, which presents a conundrum, do I finish the poem yet?
Or do I expose more of the thoughts with no connection?
I guess the connection is these are the things that keep me awake in the dead of night
And these are also the ones that I wake up for
Here's another one: Why do I love?
It comes so quick and stays so long and pains me to say that it churns my stomach
It makes no sense and though it's an impulse I cannot control I wish I had some modicum of understanding
And there's an even longer line, to show how strongly I feel about this!

You know, the reason I switched subject materials (or maybe I didn't even do so)
is partially because I forgot I was writing this, which fits in with the subject to begin with
It comes and goes in waves and threes, triumvirates of pathetic hasty fugazi deliberation
Ill-considered and hazardously conceived, murdered at birth
In a video game, that'd be called "spawn camping", and I for some reason felt the need to point this out

The time I tried killing myself (or succumbing to these waves, if you will)
It was the very waves that prevented me from it
I stood, perched, completely naked but for a pair of underwear, on my desk, looking out my open window
I felt the need to jump and I didn't even think about who might miss me on that day, I could think of no one
But then I kept thinking and things came up, musical concepts or scenes from films or random thoughts about historical figures
And before I knew it, I was sitting.
And though I'd felt it just as strongly as before, I could somehow even procrastinate suicide
Now if that isn't a superpower, I don't know what is!

The waves, they crashed against my open skull and my exposed brain matter
And before I knew it, I faced both the predicament of pebbles and skin
My amygdala and hippocampus were both as flat and smooth as the skin of a newborn
And yet as wrinkly and terrifying as Willem Dafoe in the Lighthouse
And there I was, a trembling infant, wracked with grief, paranoia and the shivers
And there I was still yet, I was Methuselah and I forgot what made me so

If I have to be honest with you, frank and earnest, as vulnerable as I always am...
I forgot why I wrote this by the time it was completed
But that is not the only thing I've lost
I look in the mirror and I see an ocean, formless, unending, ceaseless, hurdling ever toward
Toward, toward, toward
What is your identity, oh great one of the waves?

I want to be part of the industry
To those in the know
This may come off as a confession
Of my ineptitude in joining music
Yes, Music, with a capital M
The industry of music
Holed off from the world
This however, is not the case
I am fawning over the Industry
A world of hard workers
A world of early deaths
And one where there is no satisfaction

I want to be part of the industry
I am deeply and utterly heartbroken
At my love of the arts and avant-garde
I want to be like the old man
From the bus station that one time prior
He was wearing a tattered hat
His coat was torn in places
His shoes were discolored from glue
His face was dark as soot from dirt
His beard was patchy, and greyish
Yet through his eyes, I saw a flash
A flash of a diamond nature
His veins bled gold and his brow, well
His sweat was pure *******
And even thusly so, he held something
That I could never even begin to touch
He held in himself no hostility
No morosity or animosity
He was a happy man and nothing more
And though I may live for far longer
I wish to trade places yet still

I want to be part of the industry
I want my body to be battered
I want my will to be shattered
If I were to wish for something
It would be to become a machine
In a factory, operated by a ******
Functioning in perfect unison
With my focused master
I want to be a slave to the industry
I want to be destroyed for a good reason
Rather than the war of attrition
That I've been fighting for 20 something years now

I want to be part of the industry
The *** industry
No, I am not professing that I would enjoy being on call
I want to be ***** by the evil that man wills
By the willing and heretical deities of this land

I dreamed of being cannibalized
A man of gigantic proportions stood above me
He had a tail, and a horse's face
His voice was the sound of charcoal burning
He whispered to me with malevolence
"You will never be who you desire to be"
I knew in my heart of hearts that he was right
He took all of his clothes off, slowly
In order to allow me a view of his many scars
Burns, stab wounds, scratches
All over his brown leather skin
His face changed into something else
It was my face, as a man
He ****** me, against my will
And after he had had his way with me
He began to tear me apart with his hands
Slowly ripping off my flesh, bit by bit
I could not move against his immense force
But I felt every single minutia of pain
I became nothing, and I was now one with him
I will never be a woman again

I want to be part of the industry
I want to be one of the many robots
That are tearing jobs away from good-willed working men
Or so I hear they are, anyway

I want to be part of the soil
I want you to walk over me
Maybe this way I would assist you in something
I would help you reach your goal at the ends of this earth
I want to be dirt, sand and soft rock
To be malleable by hand and to be useful in some way
I want to know why the Greater Will cursed me this way
Why I must see the earth in such a Wretched form
Why where others see color, I see monochrome
Why where others see camaraderie, I see crushing solitude
My becoming an Artist was a great mistake
I've always wanted to be nothing more than a machine

I want you to understand
You, You, You, with a capital Y, the divine You
That I do love you, if somewhat differently than they do
And I apologize for not showing it while I had the chance
I will miss the days when we walked this earth together
We were Wretched together, unlike the others
I hope in your sleep, your eternal and infinite sleep
You find the wisdom that I denied you
I will miss you like you were a brother to me, because you were
I am lonely without you
But so it goes, or at least that's what they tell me

There was a dead horse on my way to work today
The horse had been there a while
I do not know why or how it was left there
But I certainly felt a kinship towards it
I'm a doer, not a waiter, I swear
I only ever wait for impossible things
Sort of like I'm waiting for Godot, in a way
Or like waiting for the dead horse to come alive
Why did it die, anyway? Who left it there?
I heard it beckon to me, softly, quietly
It told me about its pain and it felt mine
It related itself to me, singing sweetly
I could not relate mine to it
But I felt slowly but surely my drifting
We switched places, the dead horse and I
I was the horse, on the side of the road
Down by the railway, dead
And the horse was the one that went to work today
I spent my day, baking in the sun
My odor becoming more and more pungent
And the horse worked tirelessly at the workshop

I'm waiting for the dead horse to come alive
Why was it left out in the sun to die?
Why did nobody care for it in its time of need?
Now it's growing more and more rancid
**** all around its feet and face
And the other horses are all gone
No funeral was held, no ceremony
Just the sweet, inviting smell of death
Quite a squalid state of affairs
How I long to understand how he feels right now

I'm waiting for my dead friend to come alive
Why was he left in the hospital to die?
Why could I not care for him in his time of need?
Now he's growing further and further
Water all around his feet and face
And the other friends are all gone
How I wish I could hear him just once more
Or see the phone ring and know it's him
How I wish he'd ask me how the music is going
Or lecture me about the futility again

I'm waiting for my broken heart to heal
This one really needs no explanation, does it?
All those with broken hearts deserve it
Or at least that's what they keep telling me

I'm waiting for the dead horse to speak to me
A lonely, rotting bovine on the side of the road
Maggots live as kings tonight
"Horses aren't bovines"
I yell at myself in reprimand
"I know, but I forgot the categorization"
I respond in a slightly altered intonation

I'm waiting for Godot today
I like waiting for impossible things
It fills me with purpose, and prolongs the inevitable
As long as I wait and do there is no death
I have long since ceased the doing, but waiting is fine
This bus stop sure is lonely, save for the old man
The old man keeps asking for cigarettes
I reach into my pockets to see
There is a decade-old pack of cigarettes
He takes one and thanks me with a slur
"Did you know I used to smoke, too?"
I ask with a childish naiveté
"Of course, I was there."
He answers as though it's second nature to him

I'm waiting to grow young again
I'm sick of being the old man in the bus stop
I'm sick of the decade old cigarettes from the young man
He is always late and he never buys me a fresh pack

I'm waiting to **** myself
"I'm thinking of ending things" as some might say
In some ways I'm quite like Charlie Kaufman
I also have trouble finishing my work
And my work also makes very little sense to others
But where he is original, I'm ripping him off
And so I'm waiting to **** myself
In a sense though, I'm already dead, baking in the sun
Because remember, I am the dead horse
Quite fond of beating the dead horse in this poem, too
I wonder what my family would say about that analogy
"That's very funny" they might say "you should be a philosopher"
I wonder what my psychologist would say about that analogy
"That's completely normal" she might say
"Everybody relates to dead horses and fantasizes"
"You're just like all the others"
I wonder if she's correct again

I'm waiting to become the John Fahey of the clarinet
In a sense I already am that
Because like Fahey, nobody listens to what I do
But where he is original, I'm ripping him off
And so I'm waiting to become the John Fahey
Of the clarinet
I already said that before, didn't I?

I'm waiting for this season of Better Call Saul to end
While it's airing I cannot **** myself
I am far too invested in it to **** myself
And surely enough these weeks get longer and longer
So I'm alive more and more each week

On my way home from work, I pass the same road again
The horse is alive, and seems happy to see me again
I wonder what caused the anomalous behavior
Perhaps it was sick? But how did it get better so fast?
The ideal time to end it has passed
Because remember, I am the dead horse
And if the horse is alive, I am alive also
And so, I think you've already guessed what I'm going to say
I'm waiting to **** myself again

MOVEMENT I (written to be performed on tárogató, accompanied by acoustic guitar)

"The morn rises o'erhead
The baker bakes the daily bread
The people smell the blooming roses
Happiness in smaller doses

The children go off to their school
And think learning is ever so cruel
But they'll wish these days back
Everyone will wish these days back

Glowing rays crown the apartments
It is, in return, dubbed glorious hence
Though the clouds will later darken
And the air will taste of iron"

MOVEMENT II (written to be performed on baritone saxophone)

"Radiant, glowing
Destructive but invisible
The naked eye suffers
The body faulters and wilts
Crime and agony
Pain and suffering
Endless, endless throes of woes
Breaths draw short
The air becomes thin
The water grows darker
Blackness overtakes
This is the realm of Death
Come to take ye
Who dare tempt his fated word.

You, whose body fails
Whose organs rupture and fall apart
I suggest you tell your fellow man
Die screaming
The alternative is far more sinister."

MOVEMENT III (written to be performed on contrabass clarinet, accompanied by prepared electric guitar and bowed cymbals)

"Bloom (wilt)
Grow (die)
Sane (mind)
Must (cry)
...
Decay (decay (decay (decay (decay))))
And a reminder for the future folk:
Bury your dead far beneath."

Low down in the dirt and silt,
Buried hatchet, blade and hilt,
Armor without sparkling gold,
Body taken o'er by mold.

'Tis the flesh and blood of him,
Ignatius, whose body dim.
But mind so sharp it cut through tin,
Forgotten now by all his kin.

Forgotten by himself, as well,
All't remains; the bronzen bell.
That rang when beastly men he fell
And sent nations to fiery hell:

He died not as he lived before,
Not on the fields of battle evermore;
Killed, he was, by a simple thing:
A mind destroyed by a ceaseless ring.

And thus, all that remains are the corpses,
The blood and gore, the slain forces.
And a man who could not be destroyed,
Lest it be by his own body.

But we shant forget the legacy
We shall compose a threnody
For to forget is but heresy
Remember our simple knight.

The song that I once wrote
Reverberates through the halls
Sang by a lonesome *****
In his rasping, croaked tone

He sings and he sobs
His tears falling faintly
Drops as though large diamonds
In the shapes of the zodiac

What is a song, then
If not something to be shared with those you love
What meaning is there to singing
If it must fall on the deafest of ears

I set myself ablaze and then I fly about the room
Time and space became for me a lovely little tomb
Apparitions far more friendly than the people's gloom
That is why I live among the stars upon the moon

Gaze upon me, frail and mighty, see me and despair
Powerful and terrifying is the returned stare
Lo am I, high in the sky with my infernal horn
Play the notes and make the world my booming voice adorn