Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
Edward Laine Feb 2012
Observations & conversations, written the the shallow heights of the sinister winter.
The year that the would ended, successfully, unsuccessfully
''who were forced to open antique stores where they thought they were growing old & cried''(AG)
The same year we lost Bert & nobody cared & as a mark of respect, all of my guitars were given away as
parting gifts & so the songs did not cease to be written but only written now on key-junk & toy-scramble
& far as my plans are planned this is the way I will stay, & no, your're right, it's true I haven't played  show in  months. My fingers now smooth & twice as yellow, just like when I was older than I was tomorrow & you ask me if I have ever been forever & the notebook brimmed over full of eavesdropping & secret secrets I expose in writing that you'll never read  & long walks home & Picasso pictures of strangers that I've never seen (gasp!) The great mythological hat flapped, low heeled, opaque smoke covered goon of the night, only to be seen propping up lamp posts for a light to scribble by  & then gone in to the night again like Jack The Shadow when he was young & always one eye open when the cars drive by, to save the blind eye, in one eye anyway & now & then blind in both by text message of newfangled but out of date technobabble & uncool is the new cool. Tired, writing.
The gravel mounted marching marvel, which never really made any sense to begin with  but(have you ever read Tender buttons?) nothing else really ever makes sense too, just like when I discovered that time doesn't exist, but O' the contradiction of the clock ticking. simultaneously asking favours from the moon, saying ''come on, please, tonight could really be the night, one more, anything,  anyone will do'' praying, but only in jest & grand sarcasm just like the day that Chaplin died(although, yes it's true I do enjoy the merriment, but in the end it only brings me down once again to think how its only once a year that people stop hating each other & then only for the want of THINGS) & now birthdays too have fallen through the holes in the floor in a see-no-evil-hear-no-evil attempt to keep from aging & even now I feel a little older(tick tick tick). Always fearful of change, constantly fumbling for more change in futile empty pockets in the back bar to keep from being seen & then back around the river again to sleep & dream only the most mundane of dreams to wake up scared that you have no ideas left & your creativity, which was all you ever had has finally dried up before you really got to use it, & the pain in your nut-box, maybe you've really gone too far this time & maybe you really have woken up dead this time & woe is everything & you never got to be a cliche & move to Paris & write & starve  & drink with Hem & Fitz & watch Fitz faint & work in a hotel with Orwell & all the Russians & be treated like **** by Strickland(even he was fictional & if he wasnt he died a leaper any-who).
you know you've always been a leth-wretch & a glutton for sorrow, but who cares about happiness, all things temporary etc etc. & I remember saying '' I think to make any great art, you first need to die a little'' when I was drunk & the next day feeling a fool, but ''better a witty fool than a foolish wit'' etc etc. when I got the beermares & the flashbacks of secret hand holding under the table & us(I), waiting until we were alone & never spoke of it again(again)& now the standard issue of time apart before we forget again & the whole thing will unravel again with shocking to the detail similarity as before & the time before also similar, for which I wont go into details for fear of you reading this & having probably already written it yourself, you being a much greater writer than I & we both know it, but still you would never say it & I only babble about myself in a chain smoking, nonsensical, bending on a loop, only ever thinking out loud fuzzy feedback ash tipping of the mind but still I wouldn't give away any secrets. I'm still surprised I gave you my real name, but my oh my, isn't hard being a spy.
Phil Smith Dec 2014
Curse this whimsical technobabble!
Curse it all day long!
Here's a short list of things:
Opinions!
Opinions about religions on the Internet,
Opinions about Where the Wild Things Are,
Opinions about
other people's opinions.
Trevor Gates Dec 2018
That other part of me is hemorrhaging again

You can see it if I pull up my shirt

It’s just below the scar on my stomach

Don't you see it?

That’s ok; no one does the first time

You have to get used to the idea that something

Something lives inside your body

Other than yourself.

It’s like letting the pus of an infection

Or the twisting the water out of a damp towel

Counting the minutes, are we?

Those cracks in the medicine cabinet are getting bigger

By the day

The walls are hollowing out

As much as you to picture me,

You’re going to be distracted by the woman walking the other way

Crossing your path wearing black stockings,

a low trim skirt

And a pale face that bears no eyes.

I’m past the elevators, in apt# 276—

Ignore the violently shuddering man in 274

Like an idling phantom, turning to catch you

Our synthetic blood laced with FDA-approved preservatives

The bass boosted from trunks of Cadillac coup-devilles

Synths layers—then delayed, and phased through mixer boards

Faces given masks to paint and supply over masses with

Industrial strength dream pop for Death metal Floridians

Mesa Boogie rectifier amps thrashing and impregnating ears

Scotch eggs soft boiled and left in saucers of cream and Irish whiskey

Children walking single file face towards modern Auschwitz.

Snail trails over rotten apple cores

Left by riot girl Eves

And warned by Adam O’ Conservatism

Ahead of corporate delusions of grandeur

The people raise banners to spoon-fed malcontent fools,

Hiding the holes in their teeth,

Using metal clamps for their jaws and joints

Hosing down any person not white in appearance

And pigmentation, putting the carcasses in  

Meat grinders and rubber soles

The devil in the frying pan, ready to harden arteries like teenage *****.

An incoherent mess of self-indulgent metaphors

Spewing from rushing fingers tips on clashing keyboards

And aching, sore, tense back muscles,

And weakened nimble fingers

From a late 20s savant or loser

Unfulfilled, unquenched, unsatisfied, but—

The time will come when we shine and when we reap what we sew

And live lives that we always wanted for ourselves

But the longer we wait the older we get,

and the days don’t last as long

The weeks fly by

And the eternal year of our youth is

but the quick and fleeting year of our age

At one point does the ambition and aspiration,

fade like our energy in our bodies?

We learn to live with disappointment

and join the herd of others like us

And praise the idols of the limelight

The industrial age for the modern American economy,

For when the night has a thousand eyes

And we’re a thousand kisses deep

And we shed tears only angels can envy

We’ll know what sorrow is

captured on film and described in books

Where literature can emphasize—

illustrate with text what paintings couldn’t

It’s a stupid septuagenarian fantasy that fades

With the vagrant woodsman covered in ash and coal

Roswell interstellar lights escaping over the 1950s desert

And the roads smelling of sulphur and shrimp

Crystallized cathedral spires

I’ll get naked for a dive bar lunch of psychosexual deviants

And Warhol-esque color coding mixed drinks under neon flickering

and horse fly buzzing

And clubs to dance till the apocalypse can edge our lust

Seek fulfillment in the retro ultra-nuclear fusion reactor made up by

Technobabble neuromancers sitting in platinum rooms waiting
for the show to be picked up for a revival on cable 25 years later.
We’ll run the blade against the grain and find that soft spot

For the blackened metal to merge with flesh

and can call itself bone when we know it’s all just really

Artificial.

— The End —