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softcomponent May 2014
the Land of Opportunity
softcomponent
May 2014
Betwixt of any sense beyond experiment, I sat on the bed between shifts and out-whipped the bag of Concerta given to me by Matt, o'timey hard-worker-soft-souled Matt, who felt, perhaps, that I had a legitimate reason to explore this legal avenue of pharmaceutical mind-manipulation for reasons he would rather fathom in retrospect. I popped a single pill, and voilà, the legal-cocainnabinoid began to flow between my red and white blood-cells playing cops and robbers.
It is when I feel nostalgic that I feel the need to write. I remembered, at work, with all those strange everyone-elses faces gliding past (and myself annoyed at the general lack of positive reception "Hello there!" "h .. i ." is one sour-looking businessmans sultry whispered reply.. once, a woman told me 'look, I know that you are told to say hello at the door to everyone who enters, but I don't like it. I just want to shop in peace, and no, I don't need any help' and without case to what my managers could say, I somewhat-hissed-back, "if you don't want to be greeted, then perhaps you shouldn't walk into big private corporate establishments to find the books you're looking for," and she shrugged and muttered some ****-talk under her breath and glided upstairs to find a copy of Ayn Rand's Fountainhead or Machiavelli's The Prince to validate her bitter attitude, I bet, the sour witch), my time spent living in that backwater Esso suburb of Port Coquitlam back in 2011 when Occupy Wall Street was still a hungry potential, not yet bogged down in procrastinates over herbal teas and talk of chakras and enlightenment and how the typical Wall Street businessman probably never had a real ****** and hence had never truly satisfied the energies now burnt-to-crisps inside his Root Chakra or whathaveyou, where I believed I would find a better, more interesting world further from the musty-smallness of forest-drenched rain-drenched Powell River, only to discover I may be right outside my front door, but that's EXACTLY where I was, no further than right outside my front door.. I mean, for Goddaskes, I was born in Vancouver, this isn't a culturally-shocking move to New Delhi or Kathmandu--- and so on and so forth is how I once berated myself thru constant cycling thoughts of no-escape, I, a little walking hell of devils-advice and panic disorder-- the Great Big Port City of George Vancouver only succeeding in further overwhelming my already delicate attempt at false optimism thru self-voided Buddhist smalltalk as I travelled from bookstore to bookstore reading Alan Watts in shady attempts to save-myself but only digging my walking grave even deeper into the soil of feared-insanity.
Port Coquitlam itself was a small-town wearing a business suit and holding hands with an angry father forcing him to college for computer networking as it's the most economically viable market at hand.. at first, I did not see this. I saw my idolized imaginings of Vancouver (never Port Coquitlam), the shining water-reflected skyline of my past and present legacies, where my father once snorted ******* with a bohemian group of someones, and my mother tried LSD just to prove to her friends how bad it was (and lo and behold, what a terrible time she had!), all this Otherness, Strangeness, yet still Connected-- an Otherness with which I was taken, left to whisper into empty Campbell's cans so-as to speak with the city from a distance, two children growing older together 'til my inevitable return and our agreement to share costs on rent.
I returned, as planned. I returned, and found that old-best-friend hating the Homeless and loving the Rich-- spending time with the Peppy Plutocracy whilst enslaving the Middle Classes (first Letter Capitals to Assist YOU in Grasping my Anger with All Five Thumbs) and the horrors I saw in my already delicate state, all the starving addictives slouching-inching down the sides of ***** old walls, the only thing missing a smear of blood to follow their corpseish collapse, all just footnotes to history, footnotes to wealth and progress-reality, all footnotes with no shoes O my God O my Goodness and O Canada, Our Home and Native Land!
It hurt like it did, but I felt powerless and gaited. Felt like it were just as well me (*** it just as well is), I, in Vancouver.. *Great Big Port City of George Vancouver.. saw the end-stretching-cold-legs of Nietzsche's Dead God.. those in cutthroat-black-suits armed with calculators and wives could afford private jets and yearly trips 'round our globular strangeness whilst others had to beg and berate and debate and break-down to get a crummy old bagel and a past-due mostly-empty jug of old milk and perhaps a 'side of fries with that order.'
What crushed me so much about this playing a Witness to God's Death (or, not so much a 'witness' as a relative asked to the morgue to identify the body) was my intuitive grasp that this is the poverty of the First World.. this is not as bad as it gets and on a scale of 1 to 10 this would only be a 3.. all the poor and displaced of Eastern Europe.. Moldovan families indifferent to the whims and what's taken.. someone called me a Socialist and said I would later grow out of it as 'reality' angled its rearing-ugly head to chop me smithereens like it did so mercilessly to the Poor and Irrelevant.. I looked at them and still look at people like them and think 'that is evil unsure of itself.. that is evil unaware... that is evil and evil is evil to watch..' the Evil Act being the use of Money to purchase the world, demanding us all to pay royalties (mass royalties) for the privilege of life so afforded by them.. (the Sons and Daughters of God first stabbing their father then stabbing themselves then locking away and ignoring their young brother with cerebral palsy '*** he could never be armed with a calculator, nor wife)..
I learned, thru practice, to cope with these evils as laws-for-now. Coping did not mean tolerance, nor did coping mean agreement.. I had charged at life expecting hugs and bottles.. what I got was hugs and bottles.. all while I watched over the shoulder of whoever embraced me and saw young-others doing the same, where are the hugs and bottles..? they sank into the nether as the crowd ebbed past, ignoring the cries of pleading love, pleading love over time so traumatised as to distort this love (so inherent and implied in the Heart) into confusion, confusion into loss, and loss into hatred.. as the crowd ebbed past, the crowd ebbed past..
After 3 and a half months, I moved back home to Powell River.. the soggy ol' calm of what I already knew.. the warm arms of the rest, the warm arms of water-reflected sunsets.. and I got my hugs and bottles.
but was this really a happy ending?
It is when I feel nostalgic that I feel the need to write. I remembered, at work, with all those strange everyone-elses faces gliding past (and myself annoyed at the general lack of positive reception "Hello there!" "h .. i ." is one sour-looking businessmans sultry whispered reply.. once, a woman told me 'look, I know that you are told to say hello at the door to everyone who enters, but I don't like it. I just want to shop in peace, and no, I don't need any help' and without case to what my managers could say, I somewhat-hissed-back, "if you don't want to be greeted, then perhaps you shouldn't walk into big private corporate establishments to find the books you're looking for," and she shrugged and muttered some ****-talk under her breath and glided upstairs to find a copy of Ayn Rand's Fountainhead or Machiavelli's The Prince to validate her bitter attitude, I bet, the sour witch), my time spent living in that backwater Esso suburb of Port Coquitlam back in 2011 when Occupy Wall Street was still a hungry potential, not yet bogged down in procrastinates over herbal teas and talk of chakras and enlightenment and how the typical Wall Street businessman probably never had a real ****** and hence had never truly satisfied the energies now burnt-to-crisps inside his Root Chakra or whathaveyou, where I believed I would find a better, more interesting world further from the musty-smallness of forest-drenched rain-drenched Powell River, only to discover I may be right outside my front door, but that's EXACTLY where I was, no further than right outside my front door.. I mean, for Goddaskes, I was born in Vancouver, this isn't a culturally-shocking move to New Delhi or Kathmandu--- and so on and so forth is how I once berated myself thru constant cycling thoughts of no-escape, I, a little walking hell of devils-advice and panic disorder-- the Great Big Port City of George Vancouver only succeeding in further overwhelming my already delicate attempt at false optimism thru self-voided Buddhist smalltalk as I travelled from bookstore to bookstore reading Alan Watts in shady attempts to save-myself but only digging my walking grave even deeper into the soil of feared-insanity.
Port Coquitlam itself was a small-town wearing a business suit and holding hands with an angry father forcing him to college for computer networking as it's the most economically viable market at hand.. at first, I did not see this. I saw my idolized imaginings of Vancouver (never Port Coquitlam), the shining water-reflected skyline of my past and present legacies, where my father once snorted ******* with a bohemian group of someones, and my mother tried LSD just to prove to her friends how bad it was (and lo and behold, what a terrible time she had!), all this Otherness, Strangeness, yet still Connected-- an Otherness with which I was taken, left to whisper into empty Campbell's cans so-as to speak with the city from a distance, two children growing older together 'til my inevitable return and our agreement to share costs on rent.
I returned, as planned. I returned, and found that old-best-friend hating the Homeless and loving the Rich-- spending time with the Peppy Plutocracy whilst enslaving the Middle Classes (first Letter Capitals to Assist YOU in Grasping my Anger with All Five Thumbs) and the horrors I saw in my already delicate state, all the starving addictives slouching-inching down the sides of ***** old walls, the only thing missing a smear of blood to follow their corpseish collapse, all just footnotes to history, footnotes to wealth and progress-reality, all footnotes with no shoes O my God O my Goodness and O Canada, Our Home and Native Land!
It hurt like it did, but I felt powerless and gaited. Felt like it were just as well me (*** it just as well is), I, in Vancouver.. *Great Big Port City of George Vancouver.. saw the end-stretching-cold-legs of Nietzsche's Dead God.. those in cutthroat-black-suits armed with calculators and wives could afford private jets and yearly trips 'round our globular strangeness whilst others had to beg and berate and debate and break-down to get a crummy old bagel and a past-due mostly-empty jug of old milk and perhaps a 'side of fries with that order.'
What crushed me so much about this playing a Witness to God's Death (or, not so much a 'witness' as a relative asked to the morgue to identify the body) was my intuitive grasp that this is the poverty of the First World.. this is not as bad as it gets and on a scale of 1 to 10 this would only be a 3.. all the poor and displaced of Eastern Europe.. Moldovan families indifferent to the whims and what's taken.. someone called me a Socialist and said I would later grow out of it as 'reality' angled its rearing-ugly head to chop me smithereens like it did so mercilessly to the Poor and Irrelevant.. I looked at them and still look at people like them and think 'that is evil unsure of itself.. that is evil unaware... that is evil and evil is evil to watch..' the Evil Act being the use of Money to purchase the world, demanding us all to pay royalties (mass royalties) for the privilege of life so afforded by them.. (the Sons and Daughters of God first stabbing their father then stabbing themselves then locking away and ignoring their young brother with cerebral palsy '*** he could never be armed with a calculator, nor wife)..
I learned, thru practice, to cope with these evils as laws-for-now. Coping did not mean tolerance, nor did coping mean agreement.. I had charged at life expecting hugs and bottles.. what I got was hugs and bottles.. all while I watched over the shoulder of whoever embraced me and saw young-others doing the same, where are the hugs and bottles..? they sank into the nether as the crowd ebbed past, ignoring the cries of pleading love, pleading love over time so traumatised as to distort this love (so inherent and implied in the Heart) into confusion, confusion into loss, and loss into hatred.. as the crowd ebbed past, the crowd ebbed past..
After 3 and a half months, I moved back home to Powell River.. the soggy ol' calm of what I already knew.. the warm arms of the rest, the warm arms of water-reflected sunsets.. and I got my hugs and bottles.
but was this really a happy ending?
Mikaila
Aug 2018
Blue stage lights on skin
The curve of a jaw
Eyes glittering in the dark,
Raw and human.
Something swells with the silence
A truth never spoken
Like a ****** of music only half heard,
Barely remembered but achingly lovely.
Some marriage of sweetness and savagery
Courses beneath the shadows of this place,
An intimate wound
It scrapes at the hollow parts of hearts and lungs
Demanding
Purchase,
Demanding breath-
Famished in its brevity.
It is made here and it dies here,
Witnessed, at least, if not inhabited.
Every other face- white as bone and as hard-
Stares, blank,
And they do not understand
But sometimes,
They feel.
Fairy lights
The trees glow and fade
Shadows stretch long, reaching for feet that scuttle back
Afraid to let light soak them
Because here it has substance.
Others bathe in it
Nourished
Faces bared to the blue and the red
Upturned as to rain after a long and bitter drought.
They know it as water
Hold it as water- it slides away from them,
A thought half formed, a memory half loved
A step toward
God
That falls into a stumble.
I am always afraid that nobody treasures this place.
Always sad, somehow, to suspect that many don’t.
They say the magic will fade with time.
They do not know magic.
Hands, gentle,
The hands of a stranger
But known, known as water
As light.
Contained within one fragile touch, the idea that hands are not weapons
The cautious testing of fingers against flesh
Innocent, a connection between beings
Who were born of blood and will turn to dust within seconds
And who only just now have become aware
That their palms are miracles.
Safety- a contract,
A careful consent
To reveal,
To be vulnerable for a moment-
If the moment is scripted and choreographed,
The bow and curtsy of a dance both partners know,
The permission a mask gives
To tell the truth.
It is eyes which cut deep, not hands
Wounds that last for years
Resurfacing as prayer.
Silent in the mirror of another's eyes,
A vision of what we could be
If we shed our disguises as Ordinary People and rose to our forgotten grace,
If we let others in not as lovers or as owners but as fragments of the soul we all share.
That loneliness- the grief of contact- crescendos in the corners of this place.
It is loud
Louder than music,
Louder than shouts and screams.
It grows by the moment, reaching its fingers along the walls behind footsteps, digging its heels into the fragile fabric of whispers, wrapping its ghostly arms around shoulders and tracing collarbones with cold tenderness.
It is the grief of closeness, and the grief of isolation.
It breathes here, unsmothered by the roar of subway cars, the murmur of smalltalk, or the burn of a liquor that tastes like forgetting.
This is the feeling of remembering, of being, of a truth long lost but not quite gone-
Something far away enough to be painful
But close enough to be
Unsettling.
That is why people laugh here
Why they grab what is not theirs
Why they run.
That is why they shut the door and don’t return, content to float above the surface,
Desperate to,
Terrified that if they sink even an inch
They will fall forever into themselves
And, groping for an edge
Find none.
(Terrified to realize
In becoming endless
That they always have been.)
They turn away, and call it nonsense,
Begging to remain small inside.
Not me.
I could sew my heart into the shadows of this place and not be close enough to the world it holds.
Instead I press my palms against the walls, hoping to take some of it with me each day when I leave.
They say the magic will fade with time.
They do not know magic.
The curve of a jaw
Eyes glittering in the dark,
Raw and human.
Something swells with the silence
A truth never spoken
Like a ****** of music only half heard,
Barely remembered but achingly lovely.
Some marriage of sweetness and savagery
Courses beneath the shadows of this place,
An intimate wound
It scrapes at the hollow parts of hearts and lungs
Demanding
Purchase,
Demanding breath-
Famished in its brevity.
It is made here and it dies here,
Witnessed, at least, if not inhabited.
Every other face- white as bone and as hard-
Stares, blank,
And they do not understand
But sometimes,
They feel.
Fairy lights
The trees glow and fade
Shadows stretch long, reaching for feet that scuttle back
Afraid to let light soak them
Because here it has substance.
Others bathe in it
Nourished
Faces bared to the blue and the red
Upturned as to rain after a long and bitter drought.
They know it as water
Hold it as water- it slides away from them,
A thought half formed, a memory half loved
A step toward
God
That falls into a stumble.
I am always afraid that nobody treasures this place.
Always sad, somehow, to suspect that many don’t.
They say the magic will fade with time.
They do not know magic.
Hands, gentle,
The hands of a stranger
But known, known as water
As light.
Contained within one fragile touch, the idea that hands are not weapons
The cautious testing of fingers against flesh
Innocent, a connection between beings
Who were born of blood and will turn to dust within seconds
And who only just now have become aware
That their palms are miracles.
Safety- a contract,
A careful consent
To reveal,
To be vulnerable for a moment-
If the moment is scripted and choreographed,
The bow and curtsy of a dance both partners know,
The permission a mask gives
To tell the truth.
It is eyes which cut deep, not hands
Wounds that last for years
Resurfacing as prayer.
Silent in the mirror of another's eyes,
A vision of what we could be
If we shed our disguises as Ordinary People and rose to our forgotten grace,
If we let others in not as lovers or as owners but as fragments of the soul we all share.
That loneliness- the grief of contact- crescendos in the corners of this place.
It is loud
Louder than music,
Louder than shouts and screams.
It grows by the moment, reaching its fingers along the walls behind footsteps, digging its heels into the fragile fabric of whispers, wrapping its ghostly arms around shoulders and tracing collarbones with cold tenderness.
It is the grief of closeness, and the grief of isolation.
It breathes here, unsmothered by the roar of subway cars, the murmur of smalltalk, or the burn of a liquor that tastes like forgetting.
This is the feeling of remembering, of being, of a truth long lost but not quite gone-
Something far away enough to be painful
But close enough to be
Unsettling.
That is why people laugh here
Why they grab what is not theirs
Why they run.
That is why they shut the door and don’t return, content to float above the surface,
Desperate to,
Terrified that if they sink even an inch
They will fall forever into themselves
And, groping for an edge
Find none.
(Terrified to realize
In becoming endless
That they always have been.)
They turn away, and call it nonsense,
Begging to remain small inside.
Not me.
I could sew my heart into the shadows of this place and not be close enough to the world it holds.
Instead I press my palms against the walls, hoping to take some of it with me each day when I leave.
They say the magic will fade with time.
They do not know magic.
Finn Parker Apr 2018
66 good reasons to end it all
Finn Parker
Apr 2018
I don't know how to act when women are involved
The world doesn't want my kind to begin with
Lack of significant motivation to get anything done
My wife thinks I think God is real
I'd find out if God is real
My voice is too nasally
I waste my wife's money
I can't figure out how to be normal
My dad is an alcoholic
I'm an alcoholic
I burden everyone I'm around
I seek attention
I don't want attention
That embarrassing thing I did in third grade
That embarrassing thing I did in fifth grade
That embarrassing thing I did in sixth grade
I cheated on my wife
I made another girl think I really loved her
I made another girl think we could run away together
Then I ran away without her
Blasphemy
I don't have a real job
I think I'm better at everything than I am
I think I'm superior to most everyone
I don't know what it feels like to be happy
I like futa
I cheat at my own goals
My family would be ashamed
My brother is a hikikamori and it's my fault
I scold him for it
I steal from family
I cannot empathize
I put down others to feel better
I do not want to live
I am self destructive
But not enough to count
I wear a mask around everyone
Except when I have a few beers
I listen to teenage girl scene music
I play garbage video games
I hate people who are like myself
No one cares
I lie to my spouse
I fantasize about her friends
I like cringy memes
I like memes
I think highly enough of memes to add them to this list
I prey on vulnerable women
By acting hopeless
I really am hopeless though
I seek approval in my writing
And I pretend I'm good at it
I'm too analytical
I play games no one cares about
I say things that aren't funny
I say things that aren't funny enough
And I laugh way too hard sometimes
I don't know how to keep a relationship going
And I can't make smalltalk with a straight face
I am a walking contradiction
I agree with both sides
I agree with neither side
I just want to be difficult
I insist on things that simply aren't true
And above all else I still think I'm going to heaven
The world doesn't want my kind to begin with
Lack of significant motivation to get anything done
My wife thinks I think God is real
I'd find out if God is real
My voice is too nasally
I waste my wife's money
I can't figure out how to be normal
My dad is an alcoholic
I'm an alcoholic
I burden everyone I'm around
I seek attention
I don't want attention
That embarrassing thing I did in third grade
That embarrassing thing I did in fifth grade
That embarrassing thing I did in sixth grade
I cheated on my wife
I made another girl think I really loved her
I made another girl think we could run away together
Then I ran away without her
Blasphemy
I don't have a real job
I think I'm better at everything than I am
I think I'm superior to most everyone
I don't know what it feels like to be happy
I like futa
I cheat at my own goals
My family would be ashamed
My brother is a hikikamori and it's my fault
I scold him for it
I steal from family
I cannot empathize
I put down others to feel better
I do not want to live
I am self destructive
But not enough to count
I wear a mask around everyone
Except when I have a few beers
I listen to teenage girl scene music
I play garbage video games
I hate people who are like myself
No one cares
I lie to my spouse
I fantasize about her friends
I like cringy memes
I like memes
I think highly enough of memes to add them to this list
I prey on vulnerable women
By acting hopeless
I really am hopeless though
I seek approval in my writing
And I pretend I'm good at it
I'm too analytical
I play games no one cares about
I say things that aren't funny
I say things that aren't funny enough
And I laugh way too hard sometimes
I don't know how to keep a relationship going
And I can't make smalltalk with a straight face
I am a walking contradiction
I agree with both sides
I agree with neither side
I just want to be difficult
I insist on things that simply aren't true
And above all else I still think I'm going to heaven
Please help