Find the lighter, use it as a lighthouse on a walk below the wall you watch along the wave-formations. Who Wants a Cold One? a Coors Light ad corrects.. When it comes to your home, the little things matter.. an insurance ad blares.. my computer is infected with 3rd party applications unremovable to my meagre tech-ability.. there is a hero as Joseph Campbell once theorized.. in myself like a sick bastardly virus waiting for moments to prove to me "I AM THE SAVIOR, I AM THE CHRIST, I AM THE WARLORD, MICE, MAN, AND VICE".. the windows of opportunity close, I am left waiting the door

& the elevator.

Thirty-thousand years ago, there was nothing but a breeze.. a viscous breeze across chill-spined pterodactyls.. warm-under-the-jungle-brush tyrannosaurus rex, and to think one day I will be just a legend in bone..
Charlotte said she thinks of death and so did Jen. They sat next to the all-you-can-eat and discussed the inevitable. I was sour and playful with no-will-to-understand, just reminding my hair of breezy summer days of 10, thinking of strangeness, of place I was in.

When it's quiet sometimes, I think of old dreams.. dreams I sunk below drown-level as a child in bed and belief. Both mommy and daddy were arguing in the kitchen, this was 7 or 8.. they argued so often one could hear mom begin to cry sometimes, and dad I could see in minds-eye with a grimace so closed and so creased he was hurt and yet honest.. I did not understand so I hid under-stood-silhouettes, oh adulthood..

once in dream I was in pulsing green graveyard like crayon realism strobe lights, tombstones all-round and faint-buzz of outside and one of those strange balded henchmen of badguy Jafar from Disney's Aladdin came peaking outta nowhere with curled eyebrow and baggy one-thousand-one Arabian nightlives parachute pants, curled toes brown-beige moccasins to.. he let out conniving 'HEUHEE!' and slapped me right-side cheek and I JOLTED up bedwise in real time to feel actual physical sting for a few lingered seconds then the sobs of poor mother outside.. I never remembered a dream so clearly again.. they all come, Pro-Found, and dizzy away after hour or two for rest of eternity or perhaps to Place I Can Visit at Death to Review Every Vision and I wonder... when your life flashes before your eyes and the light is encroaching, scenes of mother, brother, father, son, daughter, best-friend, party, break-up, heartbreak, slip-fall, first-sip, first-drag, last-leg, first-kiss, first-hit, first-game, fear, love,  HATE, wait.. do the Dreams come to? Are they all flesh-ed before your eyes as you pass into Light? Are they brought to direct remembrance as you cross the border with Passport of Gods and a Goddess (and which Picture appears on the Page)..?

I remember the old eczema taking bits of skin to carpets round-town and round-lower-mainland to disgust of friends old and new-- this was era where confidence ate itself in mirrors, the sober reality of ugly-ness chiseling away at my Goodness Attempts.. All That Pointless Pain was no Exception nor a Rule, it just **** Happens every once-and-again to the sound of life farting. I used to miss school for feet so impossible to walk on, pussing and bleeding and staining the sheets, shoe soles, carpets, and soul.. limp thru the hallways of Brooks Secondary feeling like bad flavor additive to multicultural Planet Earth-- sleeping 'til the bell rang drinking coffee singing songs I said '**** the ******* educational system and **** me I'm so flatlined..' someday I felt things would really get better and lucky young me I was right.

A half-decade later, I am 21 and hoping, floating, free in the breeze as the wings I have grown keep on wishing the subsistence down. The girl, whoever-she-might-as-well-be, sits immediately vertical chatting frantically to boy with a bit of a cowlick slouching on-up over a bundle of colored paperwork. It seems late in the season for homework, and assume they may have some affiliation with a crazy-hep computer design group in the tradition of Nouevau Silicon Valley.... I sit at my laptop, inching a word a million cubic millimeters closer to God or Divinity or Crescendo or A Bunch More ******* You'll End Up Ignoring---

It's a sunny day, the rain having slathered-off into obscurity somewhere with the Monsoons when the Sun gave the Moon a Soft Slap and the poor purity white-kid went off whimpering, bleeding nose-- I sat, the other night, playing another Grand Strategy game as Tom divided his time between a vaulted and damaged lover, his labor, and his life (friends, food, video-games, vice)... Chai, old Chai the Thai Guy mentioned past his nose in previous iterations of Depictions sat and described his pins-and-needles upset at his bosses at one his three many jobs.. desperately firing text-messages into receiving-space-panel and reflect and back unto Tom's smartphone dash asking him to order a six-pack from a local delivery service cuz his adrenal was giving him heartpain with hurt, and Tom being Busy as All-Ways Tom Is wasn't able to decipher the scramble in-time to make contact before closure of the liquor stores.. poor not-so-poor Chai at first felt castrated at realization he would miss the 11 PM dot-time, but didn't mind as he rendezvoused with Tom and I at Willows Beach where Tom reminded him of a whiskey he'd bought sitting counter-wise at his place.. we kissed a few Mary Janes rightsideup, dragging our butts in the sand to discuss what was wrong (each of us had a problem that night, save for perhaps a less-vocal Tom, I describing my annoyance that a lazy consensus had erupted in my sorry-hometown between my sorta-friends and friends-of-friends that my writing and sharing my writing was arrogant and I an arrogant *** for sharing and I just confounded that they would find my passions so trivial-- perhaps jealousy, perhaps complacency and judgement-for-lack-of-anything-better-to-do and ah **** em all if they think like that, I'll write and be the arrogant me they think I am and share 'til I'm blue in the face and dead perhaps for outspoken intellectualism in their autocratic pointless-waste worldviews.. sad that I dislike them only on the basis they disliked me first..)

I had planned to stay late and leave early-morn (5 or 6 AM) to catch a first-off morning bus back home and sleep, hoping for most part to avoid the shattered-***-mess of a home I was living in.
About 2 days ago, give or take, a water-line for the laundry machine had erupted to soak our entirely-carpeted basement suite, forcing the poor new landlord (a sweetheart of a man named Ron having just taken possession of the house from previous owner on May 1st and, it seems, left 'holding the bag' as they'd call it in day-trading-investment-lingo) to tear out the entirely-soaked carpet and replace it with sensible laminate flooring and rendering the entire suite virtually unlivable for indefinite-few-days and so for me work and friends and especially writing become a welcome reprieve to I, a first world Refu-Jeez.. us, so terribly-off I sip a latte near sunny panorama windows-so-clear-they're-not-there overlooking the crosses of Yates and Blanshard with European church of Gothic architectural style poking heedlessly into empty-open blue.. ironically and strangely there is a liquor store quite literally right next door, and's one I shop at often for its decent prices (God is Dead or Just Drinking to Cope with Sartre and Kierkegaard's Ultimate Thesis) (Kierkegaard especially '*** Kierkegaard seems a good and long friend of God the Almighty) (...I talk with such Judaeo-Christian Catholic rhetoric it never ceases to amaze myself as it bleeds to page..) (stranger thing is, tho, there is no beginning, no middle, no end.. you read or you are bored and either/or is just fine..)

There is some hypothesized crescendo-bliss Tech Singularity on the way in the try-dition of Ray Kurzweil and William Burroughs.. Oscar Wilde to.. (see The Soul of Man Under Socialism in essay-collect book De Profundis).. one day we will all be eternal happiness expressed in song and dance and LED erected-projections of Imperfect Universe (Our Imperfect Earth) with lives stuck on infinite repeat.. our idea of Paradise.. and for those with ability to remain rushed to cortisol (stress-the-best hormone) it will be Hell on Earth, so DRAB and THE SAME all the TIME and it's READ and it's WRITE and it's RIGHT.. the world runs faster with every passing day so desperate to discover the Globe is Flat so we can Hop Off the Other Side into what one might assume to be The Better Place.. elusively picking-up speed thinking 'closer now definitely closer now' unaware (or, secretly aware and unwilling to admit for what will one do when one cannot run?) they are Running in Circles Over and Over and Over and Over and Over Again... cannot take the hint in the fact the Pacific (same Pacific) has been crossed a hugeillion times, nor the same McDonald's in the Azores of Atlantic Portugal is the Same ******* McDonald's stopped-thru on the then-trillionth time last year... and all whilst the International Space Station remains muted up-above crossing 'round and 'round 'til the Jehovah'n Day of Judgement (Chris Hadfield now below with advice for how to run a little faster even blinded in one eye..) then there are the dying Prophets Predicting Industrial Collapse who preach upon the Mount of Internet Sinai Eternal and state "the world is now unsalvageable and we are all about to die.. if ever you wished to find Buddhistic Nirvanic Peace, now is the time so start meditating and imagine Death as New Life and Geopolitics as Game".. forever and ever and ever and ever.

It is only natural to find existence to be 'weird..' layered with Who's That's and giant What The ***** everywhichway you turn.. did it start in a Big Bang, will it end in a Big Crunch, Big Freeze, Big Bang.. ? all questions once ignored for certain ignorance and resurrected as questions concerning the Nature of the What The ***** (also known as 'Science').. and if it did start in a Big Bang, did I start in a Big Bang..? and if it does end in a Big Crunch, will I end in a Big Crunch..? am I a sudden flash of REAL in a Universe that isn't me..? or am I an entire Universe.. perhaps even more than that...? the questions pulse in youth like bad words or bullets. I once stayed up all-night thinking of infinity with my head soaring space-wise forever and ever and ever and I stopped in sudden panic thinking: I could lie here up all night and all day 'til the towered age of 37 (I was 14 at the time) and still be no further on the Universal Map than from thumb-tip-middle to thumb-nail so I wrapped up the attempt with a mix of fear and incredulity, went to school next-day exhausted and tried to explain it all to friends.. they got it, I suppose, but we were all 14 and played basketball instead (I imagined infinite-spinning-basketball on thumb of Michael Jordan).

It's always best describing life in form of Disembodied Poetics.. sure some Philistines won't understand '*** their minds are made of Clockwork, Digits, and Blockthought.. but the general psychic underly implied in all with human faculty will ring-a-ding-ding! and remember all such ancient thoughts and feels as forgotten as a child, locked away until the Spirit rose-up from a rosey thorn prickle to flower straight-up into a Rose! or so I hope as a one-of-many writers-- all of which will write so-as to speak on your behalf.. all floaty and marking a purpose.

I'm watching my life be spit back to me, through gods mouth, God threw me away into the swamps of the ugliest parts of Louisiana, where mosquitos don't dare lay their eggs. This is where the bodies of eagles rot and pedophiles and racists scrape up road **** for what it's worth and I am left searing on the road in the shimmering heat, waves from tar, crows circle in black masses, mass proceeds as the church burns, burn me with it, gracious god. I'm begging you to make my ashes worth something.

God sings out "Dastardly bastardly catastrophe girl, downing whole pill bottle model girl, where are you?" You called? I'm sitting in a parking lot, thinking how the man in front of me lot drinks a lot. He thinks he should quit a lot for his wife and kids who he loves a lot. That man from the parking lot, he bought himself another bottle of liquor with his wife's credit card. Life spins around me and I don't have time to keep up. I see you in front of me. I think of that a lot.

Beast of skipping stones, slip over me like the snake you are, wait for that Saint to catch you, hit the nail on the head and let it crucify you.

December gray makes its way into your old house, the one which you know which walls you were slammed against. Your mom sits sipping coffee in a chair.

She whispers, "I could **** you with kindness but let's see what's laying around first."  She wants to make blood soup out of you. She'll tell you to quit whining as she wrings your crooked spine. She wants all survivor, no guilt.

Hey, I heard if you get high enough you can forgive yourself. I heard if you drink a lot you stop thinking. A mobs a mob all the same even if they're with you so let's make it like this, an army of drug addicts that sympathize with you. Holding needles and spoons and blunts and razor blades with you.

We sit under the stars and look at the sky a lot. Does the night sky ever look like it does in photographs?

He is blessed to have not lost a hair, despite his climbing age.
   He is both nearsighted and farsighted; can see every turning page.
   His gray mustache is thick; his smile is jovial; he is grandfatherly.
   He is loved by many for his outgoing, convivial personality.
   One might say that death would be quite peaceful with this fellow,
   But who is to be warned that he will not even see the morrow?
   A pipe bounces in his lips as he tells heroic stories to the children:
   “He hoists up his pack and fights to reach the peak of the mountain.
   “He battles the knifelike snow as it attacks like thousands of spears.
   They stab his burning eyes, and blizzardly winds scream in his ears.”
   But what is on the other side of the mountain? What lies beyond?
   What is so great that the suspense and action must be prolonged?
   The man’s face tightens, his eyes go distant, his body goes rigid.
   It is as if his brain has suddenly transformed into a slimy liquid.
   With a rough cough and a puff of smoke, the pipe falls to the floor,
   Spilling out unused tobacco; it is a quiet, unsettling roar.
   The man’s eyes grow dark; his face turns from healthy to deathly white,
   And his head slumps down, staring at his knees, the children affright.
   As a droplet of blood seeps from his nose and caresses his dry lips,
   And a restless bead of sweat travels down the bridge and the tip,
   The children scatter like cockroaches, searching for the darkness—
   Some comfort to ease the horror and the pain and the sadness—
   Somewhere to empty their minds of this terror into a black hole—
   Someplace that they can entomb their thoughts with the secret, unknowable scrolls—
   An undisturbed place where their innocence can be embraced and consoled—
   Yet is there such a place where the recesses of the mind do not unfold?
   But already the old man is forgotten, as are his great stories and tales.
   He slips from all conscious minds and leaves nothing, no details.
   No questions arise; his whereabouts are not wondered; he is decoration:
   A work of nature’s art that is meant to stir up onlookers’ admiration.
   His beautiful stillness strikes a long, thin, metallic chord of inspiration:—;
   But it is the gong of fear and disgust that overrides these ponderations:—
   Fear and happiness battle symphonically to make the best music.
   Fear wins because screaming noise shall always reign over acoustics.
  
   A young man, unmarried upon seeing his bride-to-be hung in her room,
   Has enclosed himself in his own prison and will not come out soon.
   It is rectangular and copper, putting a deep taint on the world outside.
   Long gone is his decency, his health, his love, and his signature pride;
   Long gone is the liquid of delusional ecstasy that once filled this bottle
   That he now resides in. He feels that he has lost a hopeless battle.
   His skin is whitening, the color in his irises are fading, his body is thinning.
   Everything in him is collapsing dejectedly as his skeleton continues creeping.
   He hums an arrhythmic tune with a salmagundi of conflicting emotions:—;
   The phantasmagorical manifestation of mental convulsions:—
   The hot flames of Hysteria make love with the cool rains of Sadness;
   Joy—giddy and intoxicated—rapes Hatred with confetti and madness;
   Anger blossoms as a spring flower and attracts the red blood of Love;
   The screams of this beastly mating is heard in the heavens above—
   Oh, the horrendously whorish screams, how the animals salivate!
   The wails of bastardly offspring! How the corruption does culminate!
   One can only marvel at the dishonor that the unabashed Morality
   Has taken! How can one now differentiate between dreams and reality?
   How does one now describe dreams—so ****** and violent, but perfect?
   Or reality—so disinteresting and faulted, not a wanted soul in it?
   The entrapped man has every answer, imprisoned in a cell, like him,
   But why should he utter a word at all when he is his very own phantom:—?
   He answers only to himself, never reveals the codes he has deciphered.
   So many anomalies, oddities, and complexities that he has been inspired.
   As his breath walks away with loud shoes and its head held high,
   The world is suddenly transfixed and does not want to see him die.
   They know not his name or profession, nor can they remember his appearance.
   Even so, he has been unexpectedly labeled as their guide, their endurance.
   But he froths at the mouth and urinates freely, like a wild, untamed animal—
   For even humans become animals, and grow further to become cannibals.
   Shall all of society tumble because of a lost faith put into the faithless?
   Needless to say, an impalement on jagged rocks will not be painless.
  
   Upon the gong, a naked woman is on her knees, her wrists tied behind her back,
   And her ankles shackled. She is a pained, a contradictory nymphomaniac:
   Oh, how it hurts, but how thrilling! What is pleasure without the slightest pain:—?
   Deception! Nothing! It is suddenly worthless and full of absolute disdain!
   The woman looks up with bubbly, tearing eyes and awaits the cannonade
   Of gripping and violent desire. She will gladly be a toy, and a toy she is made:
   A sword descends and inserts itself into the woman’s welcoming throat.
   She gasps at the cold metal; how deep it falls, how it makes her feel afloat.
   How her ******* bulge with warm milk and her hips shake with anticipation
   Of what the sword has to bring: Happiness, glee, lust, and beautiful vibrations.
   She pants and chokes as the sharpness slices her inside; she tastes blood.
   The sword breaks flesh, finds her womb, and fills it like a flood.
   ******—******—******—!
   Gulp—******—gulp—******—!
   Oh, how her desires are exploding, going far beyond the limitations.
   The tastes of fulfillment come from the monsters of intimidation.
   She coughs; a crimson blob fountains and drenches her cheeks, neck,
   And her mermaidian black hair, like soft silk across her smooth back.
   Whatever blood she does not catch, the gong of fear and disgust catches,
   And it is painted redder than Judgement Day’s moon. The blood attaches
   Itself and becomes one with the gong and sings it's now morbid song.
   As the woman’s lungs are violently ripped out, she feels nothing wrong.
   Nor does she feel at all as her heart is shredded within her tireless chest.
   Rivers of blood flow down her impure body—its warmth is the best
   And brings dizziness to her he head, tears to her eyes, and wetness to her legs.
   Even as she weakly collapses, eviscerated, she continues to long, to beg.
   The gong of fear and disgust vibrates roughly, sparking hormones—
   The hormones of terror and revulsion that help her to never be alone.
  
   As the corpses rot below the acidic waters, the blood polluting
   It even further, horrors beyond comprehension begin rooting.
   The gong of fear and disgust drones over he mountains, emotionless,
   In a great search to find a host. And searching has never been hopeless.
   Catch its eye, and be afraid, or catch its eye, and breathe fire.
   Either way is a dangerous pursuit of will and courage—a dance on a wire.
                        Fly—
                    Goodbye

I'm watching my life be spit back to me, through God's mouth, God threw me away into the swamps of the ugliest parts of Louisiana, where mosquitoes don't dare lay their eggs. This is where the bodies of eagles rot and pedophiles and racists scrape up road **** for what it's worth and I am left searing on the road in the shimmering heat, waves from tar, crows circle in black masses, mass proceeds as the church burns, burn me with it, gracious God. I'm begging you to make my ashes worth something.

God sings out "Dastardly bastardly catastrophe girl, downing whole pill bottle model girl, where are you?" You called? I'm sitting in a parking lot, thinking how the man in front of ocean state job lot drinks a lot, I'm waiting for my mom and nothing in the world's more scary than waiting for what you call protection. The man drinks a lot. He thinks he should quit a lot for his wife and kids who he loves a lot. I knew a guy who smoked ***, quit because he used to do it a lot. That man from the parking lot, he bought himself another bottle of liquor with his wife's credit card. Life spins around me and I don't have time to keep up. I think of that a lot.

Beast of skipping stones, slip over me like the snake you are, wait for that Saint to catch you, hit the nail on the head and let it crucify you.

December gray makes its way into your old house, the one which you know which walls you were slammed against. Your mom sits sipping coffee in a chair.

She whispers, "I could **** you with kindness but let's see what's laying around first."  She wants to make blood soup out of you, she'll make it so you have a chipped spine, tell you to quit whining. She wants all survivor, no guilt.

Hey, I heard if you get high enough you can forgive yourself. I heard if you drink a lot you stop thinking. A mob's a mob all the same even if they're with you so let's make it like this, an army of drug addicts that sympathize with you. Holding needles and spoons and blunts and razor blades with you.

We sit under the stars and look at the sky a lot. Does the night sky ever look like it does in photographs?

Here I am: angry man.
**** yo' thoughts, **** yo' stance.
Hide my fears, 'tween my ears,
what you say, I don't hear.

Tear your seems, actin' mean,
bastardly, that's my scene.
Got my gait, heart I ate,
cut you down, left my wake.

Here I am: simple man.
**** my thoughts, **** my stance.

My love! How sweet, how prosperous!
        He lives within my heart~!
Nurtures, Oh, He cherishes –
        Oh, never shall we part!

Though I may beauty and elegance lack,
        My heart strung with sorrow’s strings,
My love, His soul does sing for me –
        In perfect melody~!

And I do love, with all my heart,
        With fiber, mind, and soul,
My perfect man, Oh, man of dreams –
        My sweetest dreams unfold.

His flaws are seamless, seams are flawless –
        Imperfections perfect –
My darkness His light, His bright my sun –
        My blight, His love confesses none –

All this, except for only one.
        A single state which rattles my commitment,
A flaw which overlooking may not come.
        Bastardly, it prevents my love’s fulfilment.

Though He should love me in all my ignorance –
        My shame, and clumsy arrogance –
That I should question Him is deplorable –
        Yet, Oh, this flaw, it’s un-ignorable!

For He is a dream, Oh, not to be!
        In my mind it’s Him I see, but –
Among the living, out in the world,
        He does not exist but in my words.

What sorrow indeed, sweet imaginings bring!
        His rose-petal scent – His eyes blue and green –
His mystical magical magnificence –
        A figment of my imagination.

In what cruel world do I live where no one accepts?
        His love so extensive, mine potent, and yet –
Because He is fake, in only my mind,
        My love is doomed, empty, lonely, and blind?
My love feels so real; I weep and I laugh,
        My emotions run rampant for Him, and still yet –
Is it not real? Only a lie?
        A lie which is felt – but still not alive?

My love, it is real, but fake just alike.

I’m not ready to leave unless they are.
You don’t understand my place; Standing stiff. Eyes stricken with fear. Hands clutching the top of my thighs.  Looking into the abyss of my unknown future.
I can’t tell where Reality is, and I’m not happy playing these hide and seek games with her.
I need solace; comfort like the smell of my blankets; like the familiar eyes of my kin; like the sound of beautiful laughter.
Rock begins to titter off the weakened cliff I’ve come so use to standing on.
My back bends forward from the lack of stability and I see the clear and foreign face of Reality. Her friendly hands open wide, ready to take me off of this crumbling rocky divide.
“You deserve so much better then this.”
My tears say it all and my legs depart from my body, ready to jump without another debated thought.
I look back and see my Past; waiting.
Bastardly
appearance Bruised
body ******
nose Weary  
smile Mouth
filled with tortured tale after tortured tale
Smiling; I jump.

Most times I think I did something wrong
As I pretend to sleep
I only focus on
the shallow breaths that hold me
I am hollow.
Eyes closed as my teeth grind
Helpless, I am
And careless, you
When you're not around
I pick specs of you off the ground
Like a fiend
And what's left of you now
Staggering into the memories
when I know they'll float away
like sailboats and getaways
Piece by piece
Into the skyline
grey and weak
But clean and porous
The waste, the mess
And I’m keeping this
you and my collapsed lungs
Ill treasure my bleeding soul
As if I couldn’t feel anything
Anything at all
They’re all keepsakes
To remind me of
Cruel You and earth and
the cold universe
And it’s buckets and baggage
Ill lie underneath just to catch
Raindrops of grief
And glass slivers of rue
And they drown
And they stick me
And I’m empty and I’m bare
But I’m full of you
And your bastardly hopes
Up to the brim, I’m spilling out
But could you please spare me,
At least,
A poor excuse for a vacuous
Clenching, desperate mettle

My heart is a flower
Pollinated by electric bees

The pulsating weather
The vagabond soil

Creates oh! A dangerous vine
My soul is a bastardly garden

Tomorrow brings more life
But what life is there for me?

Dead butterflies surround me
My body is a sick country

Oh my heart! Find God! Find God!
What is your precious?

Do you smell corpses around?
Or will you not curse the ground?