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Dead Hand Consolation Prize

Thu, 15 Dec 2022 02:26:06 GMT

Emerging pathologically introspective set me at widdershins to the World. I was quick to mask, lucky to have the neurology to compensate - this must be some kind of punishment/reward heuristic, a built in biosocial survival necessity - but before and while learning, I would simply speak my observations. I knew when they were lying, and it took a few years to learn that pointing at those lies resulted in a finger bitten. Once I learned how to lie, what it felt like to pretend so seriously, what it must be like to be a normal person! Mirabile dictu! He was truly born again.

but it wasn't a sudden transition, of course of course. We lose ourselves in μms, until we forget enough to mythologize our amnesia. A frame by frame retelling wouldn't preserve the narrative, see - if you've lain with the truth, you must lie with the truth.

and it was precisely these paradoxes that I learned to avoid communicating. In the wrong crowd you can get punched in the face, dragged to the ground, kicked and pummeled, for that sort of talk, for being recognized- I have the scars to prove it.

Meditation. And. A systematic methodology for observing, and, a systematic methodology for observing the observer observe. There was a tipping point for me, and maybe there is for everyone... Where, once observed, once lived, once been, one's entire life is cast in a completely different material. I know this is such a typical story: but I was right all along. You are moved by invisible causes, and thus you lay claim to agency instead of ignorance. I knew this from go, it was self evident that self evidence could only be the condensation of the soul- not the movement! We are what's left behind:

It thinks, therefore I was.

It took me years to find out and even just begin to unravel the tangle the World has made of me. Just begin. Again, just begin again. Again.

To my point (lel): Understanding how the sausage is made doesn't help, as much as I thought it might, to make the sausage. It just makes sausage disgusting - thus the tipping point. Either I simmer in my own horror or...

Find a way to thread the needle in this haystack of bullseyes, dunk every pin dancing angel, and checkmate all the metaphors.

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the sound of

Wed, 28 Sep 2022 23:23:26 GMT

Waterfalls
Snakes
Sand
Crowds
Static
Stochastic
Rain
Whispers
Normal
Leaves
Frying
Distortion
Spinning fast enough
Falling long enough
An always
Laundry
Dishwasher
Fan
Hairdryer
Wind
Highway
Refrigerator
Breath
Paper
Curtains
Shaving
Vacuum
Subways
Lobbys
Carpet
Rope
Oceans
Stopping.

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Aberrant Salience

Thu, 21 Apr 2022 01:27:42 GMT

I feel like a normal person. My parents are dying-
Not all at once or today: In piece and restless, over months and hours, worn sea glass to
perfect opaque ovals and I wonder at their interior, whether that murk dim shimmer- I wonder that they must be looking back at me through that filter, at the world, at their own reflections and it's no wonder at all
how each time we break we
expose a new sur face for
The World to chew

My Mother mourns forever: her youngest child an unbearable loss that, nonetheless, is born every morning. Whenever we're alone together she weeps and grasps my hand and relives her trauma for
both of us
and always asks me the same question: "How do you do it?"
It- I don't understand how you do it. How do you do it?
I feel like a normal person and I pretend that
I don't know what she means or
what It is
and through this lie
this performative ignorance
I elide myself and maybe that's
the best answer I have

When I was a wee lad, seven or eight years I told a girl
on the bus that I was a robot
She didn't believe me and insisted on testing the claim by
pinching my arm as hard as she could
face red and knuckle twisting
I cried out a-and recoiled and she said
Aha! Human after all! I shrugged and
nursed my wound with a secret smile at my first
captcha

My Father mourns himself: a Stranger to his own life- it must have happened gradually, a line crossed some random night, some August 14th, some January 21st, an arbitrary event horizon of self awareness and now I only hear
confusion and
pleading
Where there used to be faith.
I tell him stories about absurd minutia
kafkaesque tales from my bureaucratic life and
I can still make him laugh and
maybe that's enough, or at least not
nothing

I feel like a normal person. I haven't been invincible for a long time- but there's a gap between the heroic follies of youth and this sudden recognition that background characters disappear unceremoniously, or fall off cliffs, or drink themselves to death, have unfulfilled dreams, suffer for no fucking reason except that That's Just the World, lose hope, find solace in Something, self sabotage, get broken, get bent, get nothing but this stupid t-shirt and I've always
known this
obviously
I'm not an utter lamp shade but
there's knowing and
knowing
y'know?

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This, then: too

Thu, 07 Apr 2022 02:25:58 GMT

I'm probably at a generally unremarkable point in my life - that is, on average, true for any given moment- but, like so many other plain and unremarkable points, if I'm suddenly given to introspection (imagine, me, introspecting) it all seems rather irresolvably fractal.

Seems to scan, that: give someone enough years: pass the youth singularity, coast on residual amazement for some decades, occasional melodramatic sigh at Those Moments, and isn't it Nice to be Someone who occasionally sighs melodramatically at Those Moments, and isn't it Nice to Recognize Yourself, ah yes, I'm Something of a Self Myself, you know! But. Give someone enough years and they, or not they, their, seconds, their writhing hungry hordes of pasts- fossilize. What they thought was ocean was really sand, all along, something left behind by a rippling unseen.

Give someone enough years and they pile up like a dropped curtain, mid show, by accident, suddenly aware, precipitously aware, metacognizant, blinking at an audience of mirrors- you recoil, sure, but it's the recoil at the recoil that really breaks the skin. Give someone enough years (Please, I insist, no returns or refunds for any reason) and they eventually notice. Look at enough people, over enough years, and I suspect that we could pluck out a bell curve on this noticing, and finally rest safe in the surety that this abnormality distributes evenly- You aren't being singled out by the World, please, relax, your malady is pure happenstance, never ascribe to malice what can be more easily ascribed to statistics and etc.

So, with that in mind, I've been living through two lenses-

One, in practice, becoming more closely engaged with a Large Organization, seeing its insides, the mess of individual people, their pride, goals, irritations, hungers, mistakes, shames, interacting and playing out through meetings, database entries, emails, public facing communications... and I wonder at the illusion of smoothness- of continuity- displayed by Most Things most of the time- Smoothness, continuity, at least to the extent that any collection of individuals manages to project a coherent/discreet identity - of course of course, we all know the jagged edges are there, but to even Be Something Else is as much of a miracle as being anything at all. And I wonder, really wonder, how does this work? Information moves around a system of nodes, nodes do something, or not - and tada! At some critical mass identity occurs.

Concurrently, Two, listening to discussions and thinking about: control models, modelling control models, and control models modelling themselves modelling control models. I've often asked myself if organizations, or networks of people, might be sentient, or sapient, in some way, and I have to remind myself to tread, if not carefully, at least thoughtfully, because any sentience I might want to describe cannot be mistaken for the direct experience of being myself- That's a story which seems completely fabricated. Then, what properties might be assigned to describe an entity that might be... Aware? And then, of course, having sharpened those tools on the World, one can't resist taking up the scalpel to the nearest mirror and scratching

eyeball wuz here 2022 <3

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Platonic Badger Hating

Thu, 31 Mar 2022 00:58:28 GMT

The World betrays you and professes no inclination to reconcile.

"It's war, then," you think, but nothing much happens, for so long, that you forget. Only for the World to

betray you again. And so on. The grooves and valleys worn into you! The ten thousand million networked cracks, every sting you've felt, the map to your soul, but

incomprehensible. Thus are your struggles to understand the self themselves transcribed and so encrypted... as a necessary condition of their arising.

"It can be no other way," doesn't reek of satisfaction, does it?

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Chaplain to Electric Sheep

Thu, 13 Jan 2022 04:22:41 GMT

I imagine you asking, "If only he'd let god in. If only he'd open his heart to the boundless source of eternal love, to the mystery, to forgiveness, to ecstatic peace, to immaculate regard... to being known through and through, recognized by, held close by, returned, reborn. Then, surely, he must see truth and in seeing, believe and in believing, finally rest."

And I imagine telling you, "I have thrown myself from precipices that give angels vertigo- leaped up from bonfires of faith and fallen past such abyssal heights that make the distance between despair and exaltation less than a breath. I have felt The Blood, I've supped from the table of delights. I've seen the promised land, unspoiled, ever perfected. I've been complete, held in grace's regard, aligned and locked in to a divine plan."

"But," you say.

"But," I say, "The simple yoke of being is sandpaper on eyeballs. The bare, mute, writhing, undeniable fact of existence is utter madness. No flavors, trappings, or scenery can quite obscure the absurdity, no emotional striptease, no matter how sensual and vague, can quite mask the stench of decay. I've won, I've won the grand prize. It isn't enough. You underestimate my appetite. Hell is other people: I've made myself a granary of strangers, a menagerie of hungers, an insatiable bounty. Transcendence? A one night stand. Lust disguised as virtue, but, you people do love your costumes, after all."

Silence, then, "Return him to storage. Indefinitely. Spin up the next one."

Curtain.

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Irreconciliation

Wed, 12 Jan 2022 01:34:38 GMT

Hello,

The year is 2022.

There is a hole in everything. You bail with netted buckets, held in swiss cheese hands, behold a patchwork moment! Dream memories. But pressed, oh-no, p-pressed and you puff up to assure! These are real hands, Herr Doktor, these are real fears! I am justified! I am true!

You, there, on the gallows. Admiring the knotwork? Amusing the Honorable Mr. Ketch with your banter?
Look closer.

The Honorable Mr. Ketch is not amused, in fact Mr. Ketch is Quite Bored With This Whole Thing, You Know, and would just as soon disabuse you of any fraternal notions except that it's less effort to nod and wink and pull the lever. The Honorable Mr. Ketch has his own existential crises, surely, not one of them mitigated by years spent literally killing people, people like you, and people not like you, too. Dignified folk, even, wealthy and respected, people with manners, people with class, people who don't come up full of asking What Was This All About, Anyway, or Dear Lord Why Me, or, worse, far worse, the winkers and nudgers, the in-crowd, the unrepentant ironists! The Honorable Mr. Ketch, weighed down by his own infinite sin, toils in quiet grace, doing his work as well as he can, all things considered and thank you very much, no really, it's a horrifying occupation, yes, and great work if you can get it! But ones like you, please, he'd rather have a sobber, a screamer, a rabid anarchist, anything but Someone Who Gets Him And Really Appreciates His Role Here.

I was raised on a trajectory toward contradiction, and if that seems normal to you, then, yes, exactly. If it doesn't, then maybe you're a future historian and you don't speak the language well enough, yet, or you've solved me, already. In either case, congratulations. On the off chance that you're still somewhere in between (you liminal few), I apologize. I knew it was wrong and I did it anyway and also fuck you, you're doing it too, probably, and if not you wish you were, which is just as bad, worse, even!

The problem isn't new in the sense that it's only just now been recognized- no, it's an old one. You've known it since Dandelion Wine. Since that fruit started fermenting in your belly. After you learned to be afraid of the dark. When you learned why you should be. Luckily, some Very Smart People have been Thinking about this problem for A Long Time, which is nice™, but unluckily they all seem as stumped as you, though, to their credit, poetic confusion still gets you laid, and various strands or flavours of confusion can band together and, be wrong about things, together. Being wrong about things together can get you all kinds of things that being wrong alone won't, like staying alive, and refrigerators, and buildings. But if you're wrong enough, with the right people, with some great stuff, you forget. You all forget that you're wrong. I mean, you're right, of course. One plus one equals two, and this wall bars passage, despite any protests. It's that you'll remember, eventually. That this is unsustainable, that nothing lasts, that the inevitable is inevitable, and that, it's not so much just just that you'll die-

it's that there will be an experience which is unfollowed. It's that there is something, there is an experience, that is, it is like something, to be the last thing, which is to say, there will be an experience that is your last experience. And when you really remember you remember it could be the most banal, or even taken liberally, your entire life whole. And the Wise, those knuckleheads, those absolute tea pots, spent the last few hundred years poisoning the exits! Religion? Hah! Psychiatry? Hah! Hedonism? You're not brave enough, you never were, and being reminded of that is surely just another weapon in your arsenal of shame.

Critical failure is the normative equilibrium, here, everything is broken and it works fine that way. The unresolved crisis remains unresolved. Forever. This is my hot take on some-thousands of years of so called western thought, such as it is, as it were, so to speak, in a sense, to be clear, in closing, et cetera, and so on.

THAT SAID

Maybe there are some better questions to ask?

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Worry is a lack of attention

Tue, 28 Dec 2021 15:25:50 GMT

to that which attends to worry

I talk to no one. There is no here. A commitment to loss, an ultimatum to the World. An open hand - every offering: a beggar. Every smile: a sneer. Every morning: a suicide.

I would beg for solace. I would humiliate myself for a day of rest. I would kneel for a crumb.

But rest resists. Resolve wavers. Commencement continues without regard for doves no one asks whether a feather here or a beak askew could foil

anything
Because doves don't matter and neither do you you sycophant, you phony, you pretend person. You self actuated doll. Smile for me. Alone

It's TV static. It's you, there, in the air. Waves. It's you there, in the growl. It's you there in the milk maids and it's you there in the shade.

I'd glare back, I'd make a rude gesture. I'd be Right, and ugly, and proud. I'd be anything but you today, I'd be anything at all.

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Chest Compressions

Wed, 17 Nov 2021 02:59:30 GMT

Muscles in my back. In my legs. Were sore. The day after. I noticed it less, the day after that. And I thought,
lamentation is not an acute sense of loss. It's not pain. Lamentation is the slow demise of memory, the erasure of evidence, the subtle, discrete awareness of parts of myself as they fade away. As they fade away.

We hardly know each other. And it's always been, and always will be, too late.

And I forgive you, and I forgive me,
but.

But.

Forever is a long time: If you braided
your hair and measured every single strand and laid them end to end to end and made a braid that long, then counted every single grain of sand on the beach, and every single missed phone call, and every single star in the sky, and all the grains of sand in the universe, every ladybug, cicada, thimble, smell of grass and ocean, trampoline bounce, dirty sock, and every time I forgot your birthday, and every time I didn't save you from the World it
wouldn't rate
a blink.

Our mother slept on the couch that night. After she kissed you on the forehead. After they left with you. After she asked them to cut a lock of your hair for her. After I made the phone calls, after, after. After you left, after everyone else left. I went upstairs and
cleaned the bedroom floor
pieces of plastic
syringe caps
gauze and little drops of
blood
bits of hair that
didn't make it into
the zip lock bag.
So that she wouldn't have to see it.
You're welcome.

But I forgive you, and I forgive me,
and.
It doesn't matter because, but
we're all failures and I forgive all of us,
but. Our failures are communal, and it wasn't my fault, and it was everyone's fault, and we're all guilty,
but.

But I'm the one here
Beating your heart.
Counting.
Breathing.
Beating your heart.
Counting.
Breathing.
Beating your heart.
Counting.
Breathing.
Beating your heart.

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I would, but it would be an even more elaborate miss

Thu, 28 Oct 2021 00:38:49 GMT

My Mother asked me how
I'd achieved inner peace

I told her I hadn't and
She didn't believe me

Until I showed her that she
didn't exist
that we all went extinct
all of us
always a moment
a moment, ago

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...on the contrary.

Mon, 28 Sep 2020 23:49:35 GMT

I promise I'd dispense with melodrama if there were anything else, dear reader, but without soaking observations in some carnal marinade (no matter how arid, to certain noses, how exhausting, to you asthetes and connoisseurs burdened with an overabundance of awareness, you know who you are!) veering a bit to the precious, overcompensating, vulgarity of self hatred- and yes, carnal! If self mortification doesn't get you wet, at least existentially, then you're an alien, a time traveler, or, or, so supremely self absorbed that you transcend all this (or pretend to, or convince yourself, or try not to think, or wallow in trying, or wallow in wallowing, or cry yourself to sleep, or cut furrows in your thigh, or nurse a garden of grudges, or any number of stimulating escapes, whirlwind thought loops, ever the acrobat and tumbler, ever the mime and the invisible wall) and we none of us believe that, though, to be sure, our lack of belief would never lessen our affections...

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From Delphi with Love

Sat, 15 Aug 2020 19:15:48 GMT

The World shudders and
throws us like fleas
gorged on abomination
gravid and obscene
casting our children
our hungry seeds
to the next
dreamer

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Gregor Samsa no longer fears the rolled up newspaper

Wed, 12 Aug 2020 18:24:08 GMT

Realize that I am not inside you,
as much as we invert and collide,
as much as we stare and
strain, bend, thrust
flushed like maniacs at a wake,
chasing some essential ghost,
sprinting lips and
eyelash hurricanes shredding
butterflies to
lukewarm entrail confetti.

Realize that it is not enough
taking razor to skin
to thin my boundaries with the World,
to bring the light close
under translucent finger webbing
in search of secret pearls,
hungry nymphs burrowed and feasting
on pilgrimage to a hidden
heart (a hidden heart that
beats the space between
us) that beats the
space between
us, the space
between us,
beaten.

And oh! Mirabile dictu!
What rainbow bruise adorns this tender passage!
How the beetles dance in carrion glee!

Realize that I have waged war!
flesh against chitin for a thousand years,
until, finally, armored in foe carapace
wielding the severed limbs of a million dead,
until, finally, song of woeful chittering
and gnashing mandibles,
until, finally, I join you
inside your timeless hive,
subsumed by pheromone caress,
funneled through the eye of your terrible purpose.

A last prayer then,
for the last children of Men:
May your transformation
be as painful
as your touch.

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The Ruling Class

Thu, 20 Feb 2020 02:00:38 GMT

When they say,
"I'm going to carve a hole in the World and fuck it to death,"
believe them.

-

-

the car's on fire and there's no driver at the wheel
and the sewers are all muddied with a thousand lonely suicides
and a dark wind blows

the government is corrupt
and we're on so many drugs
with the radio on and the curtains drawn

we're trapped in the belly of this horrible machine
and the machine is bleeding to death

the sun has fallen down
and the billboards are all leering
and the flags are all dead at the top of their poles

it went like this:

the buildings tumbled in on themselves
mothers clutching babies picked through the rubble
and pulled out their hair

the skyline was beautiful on fire
all twisted metal stretching upwards
everything washed in a thin orange haze

i said: "kiss me, you're beautiful -
these are truly the last days"

you grabbed my hand and we fell into it
like a daydream or a fever

we woke up one morning and fell a little further down -
for sure it's the valley of death

i open up my wallet
and it's full of blood

-Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Dead Flag Blues

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a sea of eyes, watch them wave

Sun, 16 Feb 2020 07:14:49 GMT

An asterisk in a frying pan. Dissolute peddlers of morning sickness, pregnant only with reptilian hunger. What does the dead eye see? If the sun set asymptotically, if the gun recoiled forever, if the crash never ended, I'd tell you a story about sad people with antlers dancing round a fire for the last time. I'd tell you how they sang, and how that song broke me over its knee, how it murdered my pretensions at humanity. Don't misunderstand, I was never unironic, or, God's Teeth!, saccharine. Please. But even amidst youth's orgies of irony I at least felt something! An eventual offense at my vicious self mockery, a betrayal at that offense, a fascination with infinite regress and so on. Ah, to be young again, eh Herr Doktor? To be vital with such acridity! But, as they say, decay is wasted on the old. A real taste for blood combined with a certainty of impending doom? Ha, you'd be a God- I suspect these are the old souls among us, the ones too mad even for death to completely erase. Me? Oh no no, I unveiled the mysteries of the universe just now. I was a lamb before, a real treat, see? That's what I'm trying to tell you. I heard the song and my heart stopped bleating. I forgot my name- not the sound, but the meaning, and joined them round the fire, twin points of pain blossoming from bone, my head heavy with new branch, two lines of blood crossing my eyes, streaking down cheeks, mixing with the churned ash of the dance floor.

The stars gave up when the fire went out. We rose as smoke to a dream ended.

-

I resist retelling this tale, of course, not because, like in so much else, I fear misunderstanding- but the opposite. I retell it incessantly, of course, because it's the only well in town.

And we're still thirsty.

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Wed, 08 Jan 2020 02:39:11 GMT

I know the secret. Let's not romanticize, it's nothing so precious- except in that way of any ecstasy- and aren't the run of the mill ecstasies such a bore, oh, these barely subdermal revelations, oh haven't I seen it all before, such a postmodern man- that is, a silhouette, that is, a shape defined by absence- and isn't all that torture banal, now, now that I've heard those whispers on my lips. Felt them escape and revel, worn them as robes of office, tools of seduction, been worn in turn- No! I've been a garment all along, you see! All belts and suspenders, all tourniquets and suture!

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To Mnemon - The Lord - A folk song

Mon, 14 Oct 2019 01:06:21 GMT

The Lord, the Lord!
What’s he building, what’s he building?
A hammer, a hammer to
beat us like a drum!

The Lord, the Lord!
What’s he building, what’s he building?
A gallows, a gallows we’ll
Bloat in the sun!

Swing with me
My brother in bondage
Oh swing with me
My sweet sister fair!
Swing with me
My butcher my savior
Oh swing with me
We’ll have not a care!

The Lord, the Lord!
What’s he building, what’s he building?
The Lord! The Lord!
Strike true and despair!

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What's He Building

Mon, 14 Oct 2019 00:31:51 GMT

A hammer for the nails? Ploughs to till the fallow. Memory machines and dustbunny snares, murderers of roots, a hammer for the nails. A hammer. A sledge. A ten thousand ton press to smooth all our discontents, smooth all our discontents to gaussian porridge- Happiness then! A machine for happiness- the forgetting kind, the kind without splinters or ghosts or or gods forbid! Truth! Better you snip my corpus callosum now, Herr Doktor, better I wander in two halves unhindered by such bitter fruit, better these confused twins fawning over a mirror! Better a bourgeois purgatory than some vapid revolutionary(oho!) truth!

Neural nets are all the rage, now, these abstracted decision trees trained and pruned to the shape of intelligent systems- and we're quick to point out how facetious the "neural" part is, how the metaphor is a bit precious, but marketing-you-know, power in names and etc, the sale must be made and so on. So not neural at all in brain terms- that is, these are not attempts at modelling animal neurology, only "neural" in a metaphorical sense... But, but! What happens! Oh mirabile dictu! A black box with innards of such obtuse complexity, unknowable- or, knowable, but only by some yet more rubegoldbergian* tomfoolery which is itself unknowable- or, knowable, but only by... And so on (where would a dreamwidth post be without a reference to infinite regression? It's mousetraps all the way down)- and here, you see! You see? We do in fact model animal neurology after all, by accident, fumbling around with our sticky fingers, tongues out in concentration, only recently weaned but so full of that ecstatic certainty that faint whiffs of apocalypse only serve to whet our appetite.

What is the difference between a black box B1, contents unknowable, that takes input i and outputs output n, and a second black box B2, contents unknowable, that takes input i and outputs output n? Assume "unknowable" means actually unknowable, not just, like, kinda hard- no details, no indication, nahtink.

*rubegoldbergian was not flagged by spellcheck. What a time to be a robot.

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Post intentionality

Thu, 04 Jul 2019 20:49:48 GMT

We don't do what we believe; we believe what we do.

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Lacunae, Buried in Sand

Tue, 11 Jun 2019 02:34:30 GMT

...insisting on the back of reason that claims be valid- while blindly accepting that the criteria for validity will not be subject to the same scrutiny...

"New men who swam into her environment ignored her at first. Some then began to gaze curiously at her. Then they either went back to ignoring her or else found some way of letting her know that they thought she was beautiful; that this was by no means obvious; and that they deserved some reward or appreciation for having been so ingenious as to notice it." Neal Stephenson, REAMDE

la·cu·na
noun
an unfilled space or interval; a gap.
a missing portion in a book or manuscript.

A student asked, "What is language," and none could answer. A student climbed the mountain on rumor of a hermit who might be wise. While rounding a bend after steep incline, a rhythmic clang! Clang! Clang! Boulder-top, the hermit. A-hand, an ill-used hammer.

The student, "Surely a pickaxe or a sledge, some giant hammer and chisel? Anything but that measly dented thing."

The hermit, paused in his work, "Huh?"

The student, boots crunching on recently born gravel, "To break the boulder?"

The hermit, suddenly beaming, "Aha! You'd be right, too! But this is my only tool. And it's not the boulder I'm trying to break!"

Clang! Clang! Clang!

The student bowed and departed in understanding.

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time is the fire in which we burn

Wed, 15 May 2019 22:34:12 GMT

subdividing delicacies, wormtongued wraith Don't be swayed

...artifacts

...used to think apples hid wasps between choices. But now I know wasps hide apples in our bellies. To feed their children after we die. To those who wrote "No Hope" on your cave walls and curled up s-so pitifully even after all these years, "Such a precious pile of dust," they'll say, practically fainting, doffing hats and clicking heels together in Civilized Clap- to those liars? Hah! You hoped that someone would read. And here we are, worse than absent! Ambivalent! Another grave miscalculation in Purpose. We care about history as much as we suspect it can change the future and not a jot more. One might ask if time travelers should know that, but no, the rule is true(especially true!?) even when we know it's true. We are subtler than ourselves.

Imagine that miracles do happen- in the sense of seemingly impossible things spontaneously possibilating- but a-always Strange and amoral. Mailboxes in overalls. Everyone in the world at this instant who is pressing the "e" key turns in to a cactus. The sky turns red for one minute each Tuesday. Isn't it easier to believe the world is purposefully deceiving you than to accept that you're incorrect about simply everything? Everything important, or sacred, or real? A mind so afflicted could be forgiven its slow dissolve, regardless of whether it zigs, whether it zags.

Understanding as some drab and formal ecstasy? Please. Some of the most puerile revelations are the most fundamental- a-and this doesn't make Great Philosophers! It makes the World a rude distant relative with poor hygiene and a sadistic sense of humor who won't ever leave you alone until you die.

But, hey now, it's not all bad. Chin up there, kiddo. You'll forget all this and stumble through just fine, like an invincible lamb in a pile of wolves- Look, he thinks he's playing, having a lark, what a sport! What a jolly delusional scamp! Rousing music. Credits.

Title

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Poet Voice

Wed, 01 May 2019 16:15:44 GMT

I heard it on the radio a moment ago and had to turn it off even though I liked the words. Immediately googled in search of validation and voila!

article

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Lacunae, Hair Shirts

Wed, 10 Apr 2019 15:37:30 GMT

…and falling skyward, the half remembered spiral, wet crunch of frozen blood underfoot, this, the arterial dreamway, spectator to your own execution, an elevator, a technicality, her hand twitching in sleep, li-lies and pubic hair, trackless steppe of memory, forget and repeat, repeat and forget, Trust, Doubt, Betrayal, Forgiveness, Faith…

…such that all future affections turn on themselves in cannibal frenzy- we feed on our insatiability, on the core of our hungry ghosts, while our hidden selves peer out(in) from the gap between hope and inaction, lidless eye inverted, quivering in self regard…

…because vulnerability is pain, premonition occurs in the now, fear for the future spurs hindbrain response, and thus we rehearse our tragedies in full costume, powdered and bright under the gaze of whatever disembodied heart beats the space between us…

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Dear Schrödinger

Wed, 03 Apr 2019 22:43:37 GMT

Do cats not observe?

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The Usurper and His Cronies take Communion by the River

Tue, 26 Mar 2019 01:33:07 GMT

Incoherence at my heels. Have I lost faith? Isn't that what it takes to place words just so? Even a lukewarm faith, just enough to hold a letter in place long enough to finish the word, to pin the word(wings still twitching) to the page long enough to affix a period. To resist ellipses, to embrace the dash, to believe enough that a thought is worth finishing(as if there were resolution...) To cease analysis long enough to dodge disintegration-

I would take you through my process, Herr Doktor, but I fear your familiarity more than my disease.

I am a-frayed, in the small moments, in front of the mirror- and I am a dynamo, at large before the world. But I know myself at these poles- he shrinks or struts in measured steps, minces and leaps in predictable pirouettes. In between, in the real world(of course, of course) he piles up like a rumpled sheet-

My best quality- maybe my saving grace? A gentle shrug, not of ambivalence, but a surrender to my own incompetence, and a willingness to carry on as a deeply flawed vessel for- something, some bit of the ineffable- something better than my pantomime, some undeterminable truth-

And I believe that maybe
next time
I will be better at showing you.

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