Some places underground, they say
The villains and their gangs
Are hanging out and smoking dope
And doing evil things.
Your mother and your preacher
Tell you not to get involved
But you'll still go and see them
Sure as planet Earth revolves

In the dark the only light is coming
From the wicked flame
Crackling in the fireplace
Like it's some sort of game
You get caught up in something
That you'll regret before the morn
Before too long you're wishing
You were never even born

Some places underground, they say
The evil spirits wait
Alluring and seducing us
All the way to Hell's gate
The Devil has a room for you,
Another one for me
How we'll stand eternity,
We'll just have to see

for Olle Dellblad*

"When a stranger awakes in the outside, he can't sleep through the inside." -Unknown Roman Poet

As he marched about at sunset, he reached out upon the dawn, found himself in his direct path to the grave. He realized the error of his ways, a concept which is alien to him, as he is so clever he nearly always knows exactly what he is doing.

He jumped down from the boulder and strode confidently and un-haltingly, ever the straight face toward certain destruction, which turned out to really be just alright. He felt the steady burn of such realities that he had to escape before he could reach the fingers of light which crept in through the crack beneath the door.

As he tried to keep his expression as mean and cruel as ever in his career, the much less reputable and times less powerful tried to rope him back in to the cruel life again. He ignored and destroyed him, and discreetly met and signed with the ones who had only yesterday wanted to **** him. He was stuck, completely unrecognizable in the company of the most dreadful of the ****** prisoners. Prisoners of sight and mind, and most of all spirit.

The old dancer swaying in the wind.
Remembering not to remain.
Beyond reason, beyond what we pretend.
With what you say, we cannot change.

The old dancer asks you to forgive
You don't believe anything anymore
She would rather simply let you live.
She assumes you wouldn't ask for more

Where are you, where am I?
When we got here, why did you lie?
What could you tell me to believe
That you know I can perceive?

Don't ask questions, don't go forth.
The ancient dancer starts to die.
You don't realize what she's worth.
On the wind I hear her cry.

He took me on along with him
To the forest in the sky
His voice was loud and fast and deep
It made my heart to cry

His name was never mentioned in the deepest darkest place
His heart would never win if mind he tried to chase
His name was "I Am Everything"
He made the women's hearts to sing
And left me in the clearing

The river trickled by me, in yellows and in pinks
I'm uncomfortable deciding if its water I should drink

The branches of the jungle smelled like German auto cars
I climbed into the canopy to gaze at all the stars
I made change of everything, the jungle to a zoo
To make it back to home and to the embrace of you

I swim against the river and watch the moon turn green
I climb the waterfall and then right out of the ravine
I'm IN THE CLEAR...
I HAVE NO FEAR!

I

I came to see The King originally for a favor
I was a troubled writer
I searched around my home and inside myself for some kind of cure
A trick solution... Basically
I didn't want to practice
Work hard and get better.
Try and try harder
No, it was more important that I quickly and easily achieved greatness
That killed me.

I want to take you inside the moment
Have you feel the real emptiness of me
As a HUMAN BEING
As a LIVING SOUL.
There is nothing there still.
Arrested development.

Loneliness

II

It overcomes
And I try to make the decision to better mysef
But this unbearable loneliness
Inhibits action.

This was The King's curse
The King's curse this remains.
And all of it my own fault

This is me now
Walking aimlessly forward on a barren canvas
Blissfully ignorant to everything
And everything is nothing anymore
And nothing becomes something to me
A crutch I cling to for my life
And all of this is just wandering
Without hope of accomplishment
Of even the
MINIMUM
Requirements.
Minimum. minimum. MINIMUM. mINIMUM

I know some people like to keep me blind
And they don't realize it
They don't understand
Where I have lost myself
The worst part is owing that they have an idea
The worst part is KNOWING that they KNOW
That they KNOW

Knowing is important
I KNOW this now
The important thing
about knowing
Is not knowing.

Being helpless becomes the fire escape
And as I climb down to escape my landlord
I encounter other tired helpless wanderers
Slumped all over the floor, blocking several ladders down
Before I push them aside
Alienating them too

I can't let myself be friends
Or even friendly or respectful or even
Decent and not unkind
With so many people
Because they can't let me let them.

I tell lies.
They can't make me let them let me become any of those things.
Not that anyone would want to

I want everything I say
To be known by everyone
And understood and not judged
And forgiven so that I can start over.

Because the past year has become
A wrinkle in time
I have found the Time Machine
The simple mechanism
Which brings down worlds.
The most dangerous invention.
The beast that slew the kings of days gone by
And if I were stronger I would fight the beast
But I am weak and bend to their will

I am a textbook example

I am the kid in the southern gothic scene
I am the overdramatized case of redemption
I am the same as everyone who ever went before me and
I am the one who nobody expected, but
Then in a way kind of did.
You know. The textbook example.

I am the one who dreamed too hard.
And dreaming really is the only thing I do.

I try to create some reason I should buck the system
But creation isn't possible with that attitude
The ambitious negate the ambition
In this world which is always
Counter to the will
And disposition

To be rewarded for a passive existence would be a crime
It's irresponsible of anyone to let me have my way
But I can't blame them, it's easier that way
I make it impossible for them to stop me
And my punishment is losing the audience

And the audience is the only thing I want.

AUDIENCE. YOU'RE THE ONLY THING I WANT

I present to you a string of drunken accidents
Expect you to justify it for me
And fly away and
Sleep forever
Which is all I want to do

SLEEPING FOREVER. YOU ARE ALL I WANT TO DO.

Most unhealthy most unhealthy
Just give me a chance
I'm Michelangelo drawing caricatures on the boardwalk.

No I'm not.



III

I can't start to consider myself better than you in any way at all

And now when I wandered through the jungle
I stumbled upon a situation
A guy was trying to **** a guy whose giant hooves were crushing me as I walked by
And I fought them both and beat them all.

And now somebody else
Hand a transitory period
A mind-expanding event
Did something good
Like I always want to.

I'm a kind of Don Quixote
But less good
More bad.

IV

Desolate, washed up
Thin and swollen face
Barely tell the difference 'tween sleep and wake
Pigeons and rats, dogs and cats
Late at night it's snakes and bats
I just sit there numb, unmoving
Happy with my new solution
Saw no use in concentration
Drugs just give me resignation
Takes the key from my ignition
A year from now the new expansion
Will see me as an aberration
And up will rise a league of nations
Dressed in all the latest fashion
Take my name, identification
Throw away my medication
I can't rise to the occasion
I can't understand the notion
I can't meet the expectation
I can't locate my location



I don't have your full attention

V

How can I catch up
When you dropped my body off at the beginning
And brought my mind all the way up to the end?

How can I cheer up
When I walk into a confrontation
With the obvious intention
Of losing my head?

How can I shape up
When the way to do what's right
And the way to do what's wrong
Are just the same way?

How can I come out
When my life has been the open file
That everyone has rifled through?

Easily

Easily

Easily

Impossible.

VI

...orward on a barren canvas
something something
mumble mumble
wimble wimble wimble
Blissfully ignorant of everything
The surface of Mars I wander
Walk
I walk forward
I take turns
I act as if
I have a destination
I take turns
I walk forward

On the surface of Mars

After a while I think about nothing
Think about nothing
Think about nothing
Rhythms and patterns help move me along
Move me along
Move me along
The sirens of cycle are calling to me
Calling to me
Calling to me
And anything novel is something to see
Something to see
Something to see
A lot of the time I get stuck in a loop
Stuck in a loop
Stuck in a loop
A loop
A lot of the time I get stuck in a loop

A loop

And then the loop
A loop
Becomes a ring
A loop
It wraps itself around my finger
A loop
And the ring rings out to you
A loop
Ring. Ring.
Wring ring
Of its ring
But observers are observers
And they observe me
And I am never sure of their intention
I know they care less than I know they do
But I know enough to stop them from knowing
Or at least, I know that
And I know it is untrue
I believe and disbelieve

VII

I wake up and look around
They've woken me from ancient slumber
Noises bright lights total confusion
I lash out into the blinding light
At nothing in particular
I look down at myself
See myself in this pure light
See the sutures and the scars
Scabs
All drawn on with pen and ink
But the flesh beneath is rotten too
Rotten in its shallow and unstable condition
Naked and afraid I lash out again
At nothing in particular
At myself in fact
But directed out at everyone
Nurses and technicians who monitored me in my embryonic tube
That is all anybody is to me
That is all there is around me
In this chaos I can see no option
But to relish in the madness
Bite the hand that feeds me, in a way
In fact, exactly, but...
Maybe it's about time it was bitten
No use deciding
Already biting
So I destroy so I may escape
But I escape and then I know not what to do

(inside the moment. Inside the moment of realization.
The sensational horror of staring off the edge.)

VIII

Sometimes when I'm
Crawling through
Alleys, over
Fences through
Drains under
The streets

I start to experience moments of lucidity
At times I am not lost and I'm not incognito
And at times I would be safe even in the wide open streets
At times I realize just where I'm going
And I can look with clarity and laugh at all the comedy
The desolate dark comedy of errors called existence
And if I wanted I could sidestep my own mask
Just tell the world that I've been kidding
Just limp away with a chuckle and a wink
Just gather up the pieces, start again, I really mean it this time
Just forget what has happened
I already have... Why couldn't anybody else?
They already did... What's the problem?
They can forgive, perhaps forget, but never will their respect return

And anyway I still crawl through
Alleys through
Fences through
Walls.
In secret
And I'm sure
The authorities
Still know where I am
I'm sure that
To be discreet
Could be the secret

And accusatorily I'm followed
And later punishment slips past
Looming overhead,
A hawk-like creature
Many biting heads
Head 1 is Guilt
Head 2 is Shame
Head 3 is Pain
Head 4 is Doom
Head 5 is Fate
Head 6 is Nature
Head 7 is Justice
Head 8 is Mercy
Head 9 is Man
Head 10 is Woman

Fearsome talons
Talons of words, forces, actions, feelings
Even in escape I have to fear for my survival
With so many threats around me there are no safe bets
Particularly when I try to get away
And in the struggle try to knock The King's curse loose
It's happened once or twice or even four or five times
But every time it finds me here again, again





IX

Now indebted to The King
My waking Hell now worse than Nightmare
The curse is pulling all the strings
My conscience is empty and bare
Violence, violent times I live in
A living extrapolation
And in a way it feels like Heaven
Drenched in much more exploitation
Create a monster of myself
To rid the pain of being man.

My words are just a tool I use
To understand how much I feel for you
I feel the burn of spent reserves
And know I'm running out of words
They repeat and on the canvas
I see thinning, dying bones
And use them up again to spare their misery

And all I'm looking for
Is another way to say
I want to taste the lint in your belly button
Another way to say
I want to smell you sweating in my bedroom
I want to hear your heartbeat through my chest
I want to see you naked in your sunday clothes
I want to feel you crushing me above me
Penetrating me beneath me
I want to taste your ****** cracked lips
And feel you biting off my tongue
And see your nickel eyes conjoined
And hear your disappointed sigh
And smell the smoke on all our clothes and on your breath

And when I dream of being close to you
I see me not fulfilling you
I see my noble efforts come to nothing
After seven minutes trying
And I stumble from you, crying
And I see that time
Of yours and mine
Where all my bets go on the line
The game is lost
And then the cost
Our evening destroyed
And just like every time before
After you've shown me the door
I'll just keep asking more

Find yourself in the sunlight
On an empty street
Where children clamber at you,
Crying out from behind bars
Parents watch your every move
Discreetly, through dark windows

Find yourself in a herd of people
Eating in the street
Defining by negation
Where they live and who they are
Standing at the top
And never looking up,
Knowing there is nothing.

Find yourself in nowhere
Where the world is empty till it sleeps,
Then comes alive on Sunday
For a modicum of prayer,
Then back to docile slumber
Till the buses come for kids

Find yourself in the future
Where your plans back in the present
Are all fruits in baskets high
Under piles of money, lifetimes lived
And children running by
Find yourself back there again
When present catches up
What little fruit was yielded
Has now rotted to the ground

Find yourself at the beginning
Taking off in seconds now
Slates are clean and records kept
Amount to next to nothing
Never will return be possible or necessary
Take the time not to forget
How things were back on Earth

Find yourself inside a moment
Never rid of its effects
Watching fate react the same way
Time and time and time again

Find yourself at the beginning
Find again what you had lost
When years of playing off the books
Has burned a toll upon your dreams
Remember how you first began and
Start that way again

Find yourself in someone else
Your mind still only faking it
When fate weighs down upon you,
Only you will answer, not he

Find yourself on a cold streak
Never making baskets, touchdowns or base-hits
Wondering if you even know the basics
With a secret and you know you can't erase it
From the way you move your eyes to the way you hit the pavement

Find yourself in brother wilderness
Dancing in the trees alone
Head adorned explodes with color
Body moving, out of control
Lossless clarity
Sympathetic delivery
Wickedness in elegance
Elegance in wickedness
Fighting off a demon
What a planet it must be
To host such proper honest people
Among such horror and corruption

Find yourself looking back again
Reaching out again
Letting down your guard
Missing out again
Find yourself cursing your shy blind eyes
Find yourself searching in foreign lands

Find yourself looking for losers now
Helping them stand up from the ground
Sort of like kicking them while they're down
Taking advantage of their unease
Discomfortable bodies
Earnest downcast eyes
Noble grasps for fitness

Forcing a needle in cold dead flesh,
Frozen and solid and rock-hard dead
Empty but for the last droplets there
Empty and thirsty for death to come
Empty and thirsty for life

Lit two hits with one match in the dark this morning,
Hidden in the bushes,
Lonely in the moonlight
Fearful of the shadows just beyond
Weapons all replaced with loneliness and freedom
Hoping for and waiting for and dreaming for the warmth of
Women in my gym class, women in my math class,
Women in my science
Women in my English,
Film class, lunch
Women in my film club,
Women hearing poems
Women eating people
Women smoking dank ****
Women in my last dreams

Waiting for the warmth of
Being high the first time
Getting drunk with women
Women making me come
Women having problems
Losing themselves to me
Smashing someone's head in
Breeding snakes in my bed
Breeding snakes in closets
Breathing down their necks and
Making them attack

Breeding snakes in e-mails
Breeding snakes in my school
Letting them all slither
Letting them in my caves

Find yourself outside a car, high on hella marijuana
Looking in the windows at the
Normal folks inside
See them have a good time with each other,
Somehow think you may have seen her
Eyes meet yours a moment maybe
Thinking of inviting you to join her in her world
You'd accept the phantom invitation in an instant
But you turn away and you just
Dream away, avoiding putting
Wishes on the line

Then when she peers into your world
Later when you read to her
She teases and arouses you to reach into hers too.
So you take this chance when your balloon
Is close enough to hers
To reach into her basket
And when you miss and when she looks away
You try to look as if you haven't
Fallen and aren't clinging onto
Your balloon by rope.

Find yourself a fortnight later,
Somewhere she can see again, she speaks to you, you blush and answer
Nearly blurting out your heart
Writing on and watching
Hoping she can see your mind just by the
Movement of your pen, hoping
She will be surprised, come on by,
Take you up on what you offer her, ask from her
And always hope to dream of her.