we can be open, we can be sober

a friend asked, amidst twelve gin and tonics, platonic, "do you like to dance?" i explained my situation, my body, with coded eye blinks, i think she understood.

we went up to the room i rented previously, we kissed. it went pretty quickly. clothes didn't matter all of a sudden, dicks were limp before i knew they were there. she was everywhere. i asked questions, eased hands along curves of her body, kissed the parts that weren't private but that no one usually looks at. i found a dimple in her hip. she asked me for something that turned me on a lot, but something that also couldn't be done. i came on the floor i think, rested, apologized, kissed her more, sighed, rubbed her body, kissed her more, took a deep breath, fucked her for reals a bit, stopped, kissed, door knocked, she left. slept.

a foe asked of future, "how do you think that show'll be?" i thought of previous bands that she'd been in, the venue, ticket price, time and date, various other shit, like what i had to do the next day.

i texted that i couldn't sleep, and she should come over. she did, after the show, i gave her minimal directions and buzzed her in. we k***ed, i t**ched her arms, then k***ed her arms lightly with the end of my limp lips. she went d*** on *e, i w**t do** on *er. then * p***t**ted her, many d*ffer*** way*, s*e *am* a co**** tim*s, t*e* **e w*n* *ow* o* ** *gai*, * *ame *n he*, on **r. it **s mos*l* ve*y ***fi***g. s***t.

*******************

boy seeking girl who is bored and constantly dry-hungover. must have a wrecked conscience and mind, though not through experience. must like fugazi, at least a little bit. a dismal plot on life with a good base of friends, family, and comfortable money (but not excessive). politics and body type are minimal, yet must meet slightly leftest qualifications, though not too radical. girl must also know what these words mean. i know, it's asking for a lot, but hey: you deserve it.

restaurant reviews

men eat whatever is placed in front of their faces; i swim for thoughts that can be kept in my head for any conceivable amount of time. if nothing is enabled, all will retain to complete horizon and resting. the best reflection is no reflection.

the family squeezed into the small booth. the side with 2 children had plenty of room, the side with 2 adults was comically uncomfortable. they all ordered soft drinks. 2 seats down, a man asked for a drink with bitters, which fell on foreign ears. he then just asked for honey and hot water. he asked what the soups were, in response to 'tortilla' and 'chicken', he said "my stomach is kinda acting up, i'm not very hungry." he continued to talk a lot as i choked on fried ice cream.

.worst part of knowledge is fact of it .try think to create but try think to sleep it's it's it's .numbers and statistics .try hard and fail .random occurrence breeds interest .everyone pays for most things with cost benefit time relation to thoughts worthlessness .wood glue .professionalism in an empty restaurant is wasting valuable interaction space .every house walked by witnessed the loss of energy .spaced out to sound of spinning .energy to machine .energy and consciousness given to all repetitive motion that involves .fan and air conditioning unit lulls to sleep .fan and snore given credence and precedence in dream and meaning .only due to state, non-energy, non-occurrence .on off on off completely takes all function time to in in in breathe



[don't support anything]

metal seeks safety

the sharp and complete shapes of metal grow towards the softness of clouds. they amass at human junctions and intersections of commerce. species interstate with port and transport, prestige and numbers; the results scrape sky. large buildings with windows like diamonds put arms around each other as if to rejoice at victory. naturally, every human takes pleasure in and subsequently owns this victory and feels the need to name these buildings, to revel in their strange alien glory, to feel like their sight of such buildings embodies scene, spectacle, emotion, happening. as homage, every human carries a small box and contraption, one which contains a perfect and manipulable eye, perfect due to it's construction, it's mechanistic structure, it's malleable and change-based function. every human (well, most humans) tend to flock their sight and light capturing machines towards these large buildings, almost in a way that makes flesh and chemical reaction a conduit for metal communique. the living and respirating just can't get enough of fucking downtown.

my mouth yearns for the touch against skin, the simple pressing of lip's satin surface against a cheek, an earlobe, an unsuspecting neck well received. it's the dull outer surface comprised of such an amount of dead skin, with some nerve connections but muted close to pause. but it's still able to feel. when these lips connect with others, the conduit they travel to reach each other encompasses words, traditions, scents, gestures, currencies, feelings, awkwardness, shaking, time, frustration, sobriety. the leading up to this dam deconstruction and obliteration seems so endless that it's spray painted on every wall i walk by. once this happens, it seems like it's been happening for so long, that i'd only just realized that i haven't connected for like 8 months. 8 years of sundries. i close my eyes as i lie in buildings comprised mostly of plastic, metal, wood, brick; i slowly lose the desire as i forget about touch, only as i pull away from another's skin once again. i like and lie in buildings.

my sick history

i was seventeen and cookie monster eyes were looking at a creek. i puked in the creek. i tried really hard to send the signal jumping around my brain to my feet, the signal saying, "step over the creek, step over the fucking creek, it's so thin, you can just step right over it, it's no big deal," completing bodily function. i stepped directly into the creek with the right foot of a thick skate shoe, following my fucked-up friends back home with a wet, soaked shoe.

i was twenty-two and halloween; i was blacked out at an apartment that punk band 'strung out' was playing at. don't remember a thing. got driven home by my straight-edge girlfriend just before the cops came, dressed as a fairy (wand and all) for the festivities. went home to bed, puked on the bedroom door. laid in bed, puked in bed, everywhere. got cleaned up by said girlfriend, clean clothes, clean sheets, put back in bed. puked all over bed again. girlfriend slept on couch and was very pissed. woke up and did laundry while listening to hip-hop group 'atmosphere'.

i was twenty-seven and with my brother, rolling to stimulants and rick ross to the casino for the night. i was up, then way down, lost about a hundred, went to bed with intentions to work with my brother in the morning. couldn't wake up. couldn't get up. got up at noon, puked in the sink, laid back down. got up an hour later, puked bile in the sink, mostly dry-heaved and tasting of aspirin, shitty dry white chemical. laid back down. got up an hour later, puked bile in the sink, mostly dry-heaved and tasting of aspirin. laid back down. felt ok by 5pm, went to a lobster buffet that i'd earned the night before by staying at the casino for over an hour.

i was twenty-eight and i went fishing on the pacific ocean with my father and my brother. i took dramamine to stave off sea-sickness, though perhaps i didn't take it early enough. quickly i was puking up my morning muffin, banana, coffee. then came water, then came air, bile, neurotransmitters. i puked 8 times, like, 8 rounds of heaves, that is. i did catch 4 fish, though, which was more than my brother or father caught. i felt great upon docking. we shared a lovely meal that night.

i was twenty-four and i was walking home from the bars, i separated my foot into 5 parts long-ways, and stepped on parallel cracks on each part of the foot separation. i swayed as i hiccuped, i looked up to find a restaurant reflection of a friend and a hunger of death, a racing heart that couldn't be felt. i puked in a bush, once, quick, maybe to say 'fuck you' to that drunk self, to deprive him of better sleep. the only swimming position is face down, still, pronated, at rest.

i was eighteen and it was christmas night, i did shots of vodka repeatedly at my brothers place in phoenix, to the point of blackout and boxing gloves. puked in a small trash can, puked under the pillow i was using. replaced those items one year afterward as a christmas present to my brother.

"as complicated as relationships with people are, relationships with chemicals are so much more complicated and tricky."

you must show fatigue

You must join all on their own level. Everyone fatigues in due time. You must set the bar at a lower level than you can jump, to decrease expectation and increase the perception of performance. The feeling of weakness, tired, bloating, degradation, erosion, shamefulness, uneasy, distance from locus of control of body, these are all things that are bound to happen to some extent to all forms of life. One must feign these often in order to connect with those around them, but over exaggerate, exonerate, bluff a shitty hand and then show your cards as better than those around you. To show fatigue is such a necessary moment, our common thread of weakness, but always reveal it while holding the rope that is pulling upward, to then elevate from your fatigue, your weakness, your perception that you are the same as others (which you just felt!) and into your reality that you are the only one around you, therefore, you are much better than anything else. You are the pedestal, you created the rope, you are the everything that everyone talks about (of course). But you MUST be able to tactfully show your insides and insights, your ball of destruction and fright, just before you can come up for air.

i can't

I can’t conceive of life as a competition, though I learnedly know it is. Every principle of growth and development, from words to wealth, from plants to personality, from attention to knowledge, they all function on principles of evolutionary economy where competitive entities battle it out for the reproduction of themselves, living or otherwise. Yet I hear of such a thing and I back off. The most beautiful girl in recent memory alludes to others and I run away in my mind. I find something doing well and I stop my hand from reinforcement and move on, turn to something else. I can’t compete, as it only seems to be “trying too hard”, to be “all talk” when really it’s only action that I’m afraid of. My perception of evolution and growth through engaging subjects, opportunities, seems to only come from other sources, as I’m a conduit of forces that I can’t control. To reach out towards what I want has only been fucked in the past, has been a product of misperceptions and miscalculations. To sit and soak forces that come at me is to acquiesce to competition while not engaging it. The bottom line is who fucks who, I guess, who produces the word at the end of the paragraph. Ultimately, I write these words, but I don’t pretend to know where they came from or claim that I created them. For I can’t.

bold bright feathers

There are certain people that translate their moments with you into a dense conversational economy. They see every interaction as a window into piquing your interest, and hence put everything on the table as soon as you walk in the door. So as you know it’s on the other side, as you put your key in and turn the lock to click, your mind kind of takes a large breath in because it knows of its needs beyond your control or comprehension.

The odd thing about mental illness is the way in which it is socially spread, seemingly. Ill thoughts heard from others are contagious in that the more one is exposed to them, the more they remain in the back of memory, a repeated reverberation. For instance: one who works with acute mental illness hears about suicide (grandiose thoughts of self-harm) often in a typical week from those around him. He then has a few thoughts go through his head that imagine suicide, where none were present before. This comes to consciousness, bringing the thought, “Did I just think of that only because I was exposed to the possibility more often lately? Who’s to say that having these thoughts [as the reflection on these thoughts brings a multiplying effect to such thoughts] is abnormal, and why is that thin line between thought and action such a huge leap from distraction to diagnosis?” Minute cracks of distressful thoughts get their foot in the door, and only the strong and educated avoid dysfunction, danger, deviance. The drugged and marginalized still live within a frame, but cracked and weathered.

Two jars sat next to each other on the counter. A man had things to save in them, and he tried to, but the jars had no lids, so everything spoiled. A woman next door had two lids, with much to save as well, but could not fit much into a jar that wasn’t there, let alone a mechanism for tightening thread. Just like water meets earth and sun meets skin, symbolic symbiosis is as substantive as anything tangible; we live in the metaphor. Hence, a man and a woman lay next to each other, stifled, wanting, waiting, but get captured by sleep and tortured inconvenience before any release can occur. A man and a woman touch skin, hand to shoulder, lip to lip, cheek to back, but still succeed in their curiosity, if for no other reason than failure and cessation bringing the two closer to each other. To know someone’s thoughts is to know their timidity and their trappings, as well.

"this place sucks without you."

A bartender; a bartender is not your friend or your brother, or your confidant, or your television screen. But it feels like it sometimes, and if that vision in front of you cooperates with your dreams, it makes the line become a square. but a bartender, and this one who is a thousand, yet still my own, who has the most amazing cheeks and hipline and quips and eye contact and stories and teeth and SMILE and, well, tactical smile. and personality and “personality” and discounts and gifts and just the act like she really cares about my reaction to her stab at consistency in nicknames for me, me being the occasional bar patron. A bartender who solidified my attention more than the drinks did. A bartender was had, named [sonya].

A bartender was lost. I visited only sporadically, mostly Sundays, when she worked. And then I was out of town a lot, not drinking a lot, but thinking still of her a lot, doubting my thoughts of her as much as I doubt my own sense of sex. I keep going in now, seeing other people, people who can’t mix drinks well, people who focus on themselves and their own shitty ironic tattoos, people who focus on their own relationships as if we give a shit what came before. “It’s my birthday next week, and I’M WORKING…of course! I’ll be TWENTY-FIVE! Well, it’s ok, I’m single now, and I haven’t been single since I was 15. Yeah…” From her I ordered a gin drink that was weak and tasted of sugar. She poured another for a separate customer, the lead bartender saw it, took it back, made another. A song came on that I didn’t like. I was polite and I paid, and I just realized what I had taken for granted.

The walk uphill: 8 blocks of steep sidewalk leading from the Broadway bar to a more comfortable place on 15th. The wood in this bar has a dull glisten that is perhaps more perceptible to our skin and arm hair and breath than it is to our eyes. The rubber of my feet met sidewalk continually, skidding often for feel. I was very comfortable in the night air, the place and sense of direction; the more at home I feel in a walk is the more I feel I’m in a dome, even the atmosphere seems closer and more attainable. I stated years ago while in the depths of home: ‘my room feels like my skin, and this town feels like my room’. I don’t think I want to feel that again, because it feels like a betrayal of the moment I had. Yet I can’t go back, because I no longer feel that same sense of home in that exact place. Seattle is a shell of a city, but the alienation of change keeps me comfortable.

The fucked up thing is that I wanted that bartender so bad that I couldn’t show any affection whatsoever. The fucked up thing is that I can’t even call the friends that I want to talk to the most because a phone conversation just won’t cut it. The messed up thing is that I censor myself out of the consideration of no one. The thing is that I don’t care enough to keep up any kind of drive for preference, and I actually think that’s beautiful, reconciling, a return to an all-we-have.

[I can’t write what I think. I can only write what I feel. I get lost in the night scene, drink to sleep, wake up with coffee and find myself staring out of the kitchen window.]

Twisted naked tree branches sprint out of main trunk, at a much darker rate than sky behind. Sky is dark as far as sky is concerned, but still much lighter than the tree. The rapid and overbearing tree limbs spray out until the window’s threshold stops them with a clean off-white barrier. The light from above slowly filters into the window, lying on drapes and table, but steadily declines with the drink upon such surface. The phone rings and throws off the balance of contrast. The wind outside in the natural environment encases ideas of movement, but a thawed inside seats frozen warm muscles. The only fast movement is that of blood, and movement of blood mimics highways, street legs, only a mechanical basis of function, not blue oxygenate to any neuro-chemical center, only the traveled upon routes, just to keep a place awake. Photos cover inside walls, late winter shadows on black and white pictures equate space, not busy, but soft straight layered sugar.

We all want a place that is completely our own.