Igor Sapien's Daily Word

Clever Title For A Blog Entry

2009-11-15T14:57:00.005-07:00

Yes. Here it is today again. I am spending this weekend with my family. Yesterday we celebrated my niece's birthday and I gave her a painting that I've done in the last two weeks. It is so awesome to finally be doing the right thing.

Here's the painting and here's my cheeseburger:

In response to Bruce's comment the other day to my blog entry "180 x 24 Hours." Hi Bruce. I think I remember you. Maybe. Aren't you tall? That was quite a lifetime ago. I'm not sure which of my visits to jail you're referring to. Anyways. I ended up going to San Francisco and then Alaska myself in 1998. The beginning of this blog goes back to when I was in San Francisco. When I started this blog about a year and a half ago? I uploaded all the journal crap that I had and that stuff only goes back to 1998. Sadly I lost all of the writing that I'd done before that time. As Brent might remember, I had begun a long series of notebooks. Ah whatever. That's all gone. One of the small prices I had to pay for being an alcoholic fuckup.

Today however, I am still creative. Gratefully I have found that giving up my disease did not mean giving up who I am. YES!!!! In fact, it has meant that now I can finally be more of who I am. I am most certainly finding love now and deep human connections and my spirits couldn't be any "higher!"

Note to Brent: Sorry I haven't communicated with you. I haven't communicated much with anybody outside of my little recovery community but that is not a permanent thing. I have been focusing myself almost exclusively on coming back to life and it has been a full-time amazing and exciting adventure. I have noticed who visits this blog and who leaves comments and I am grateful that there are people out there who are curious and care. Actually, Brent, you have been in my thoughts quite a lot lately.

More later. Today I am beginning a new drawing of a praying mantis.

Pretty Flowers and Shit

2009-11-09T13:46:00.002-07:00

Just this: Here's a flower I finished recently. Today I finished drawing a cheeseburger. I'm getting a big kick out of the fact that I can draw stuff. How cool is that?

Sober Artism

2009-10-22T15:15:00.008-07:00

Okay. I guess I gotta give a little update. I've been sober nine months and five days now. It's the most incredible thing that's ever happened to me. I am infinitely grateful that I am an alcoholic because the hell that I went through and the experiences that I've had are giving me a balance and perspective and appreciation for how truly amazing this life can be. Because I am an alcoholic I got the wonderful gift of being able to work through AA's twelve steps and that is gradually bringing out the full depth of the talents and wisdom and love that God equipped me with when I started out in this world. Fuck yeah!

About a month ago I started painting and drawing again after a 15-20 year lapse. One of my paintings - "Surrender" was in an arts exhibit a few weeks ago and has already sold. I've been given two commissions to work on and was already paid pretty well for the preliminary sketch for one of those.

I am still unemployed, but I have been getting a lot of odd jobs helping people with their computers and that's keeping me floating.

Recently I read the first two volumes of "Conversations With God." Some pretty amazing stuff in there. One concept that has particularly helped my situation:

"The moment you say 'I want' something, the universe says, 'Indeed you do' and gives you that precise experience - the experience of 'wanting' it! Whatever you put after the word 'I' becomes your creative command."

So now instead of wanting a job and wanting rent money and wanting a healthy relationship, I put thoughts into my prayers like, "I am meeting the right people and doing the right things that are leading me into productive and profitable opportunities. Thank you, God."

Right now I'm reading "The Power of Now." Another freaked out book that works perfectly for my kind of spirituality.

Anyways, here's some of the new artwork.

This is what I look like today.

This is a little flower I drew in my notebook.

Surrender

This is my friend Victoria. She's a poet and a painter. She was key in helping me reawaken my artism. Thank you, Victoria.

This is a painting titled "One" that I made for Victoria.

This Golden Moment

2009-10-08T12:04:00.002-07:00

Hello.

Quick note here. I've done two new paintings in the past few weeks. I'll try to get them up on here soon. I'm very proud of them and it's an incredible joy to know that after almost nine months of very real sobriety, the me that was always intended to be is finally coming into focus. Yeah, good times.

I just finished reading "Conversations With God, Vol. 1" by Neale Donald Walsch last night. Holy crap :) Yeah. That's my new favorite book for today.

Anyways, what really inspired me to put up a post today is that I notice Nicole's ex(?) boyfriend/fiance has been checking my blog with regularity. Either that or somebody in Perth, Australia really has a curiosity thing going. Let me save you some time guy ... I haven't seen her since the last night that I drank back in January and I haven't spoken a word with her in at least six months. Your efforts at stalking her are better spent elsewhere. I have no desire to communicate with her unless by some freak miracle she can get honest with herself and stop spreading her beauty-colored fear all over people's lives.

So anyways. I'll be getting my nine months AA chip next saturday (10/17) and I'm just continually amazed every single freaking moment and day how awesome this life is turning out. It only gets better. Even when it's pretty bad, it's so much better.

180 x 24 Hours

2009-07-17T08:40:00.001-07:00

Six months ago today I finally admitted that I was powerless over alcohol and that my life had become unmanageable. I woke up in a strange bed and somebody was yelling something at me about 911 and there were cops at the door. Of course my first thought was a delusional one – I was pissed off that someone had come into my room and woken me up. But then I started to wake up. I was sleeping on my girlfriend's roommate's bed. Actually she was probably more of an alcohol and sex partner than any kind of a girlfriend. We most likely had some kind of brilliant argument the night before and I'd wandered off and fallen into the nearest empty bed I'd found. Fortunately I still had some of my clothes on. The roommate was well acquainted with me and had for several months been the violent enforcer of the landlord's edict that I was not allowed anywhere near that house. Even the neighbors had been notified to keep an eye out for me. And of course I was never ashamed of that – it wasn't me, it wasn't my fault – it was that stupid roommate and that evil landlord. They didn't have any sense of humor. They didn't understand that my girl and I were destined to become legendary poets one day and that we had to carry on the way we did because that's what artists do. Stupid illiterate fools they were. I'll show them some day. They'll regret having wronged the famous writer that I'm going to be.

That morning my girl backed me up and the roommate didn't press charges and the cops seemed to think the whole thing was kind of amusing and I wandered off down the alley with my backpack not yet realizing that I was wearing somebody else's pants. At this point my life and my genius had evolved to the point where I'd been homeless for about seven months. I slept on the back loading dock of a warehouse next to the railroad tracks. Whiskey and beer cushioned me from the hard and sometimes wet concrete, the piercing whistle of the trains that went past every twenty minutes, and the clouds of mosquitoes that were feeding on me when the hot sun finally woke me up each afternoon.

Sometimes I slept in the bushes outside of a church. The janitor would politely ask me to leave an hour or two before the services started in the morning. He called me “Buddy” and he said he was sorry. I'd roll up my sheet because I was sophisticated enough to sleep on one so that my clothes wouldn't soil and I'd start another long day of walking and wandering. One of the worst things about living on the streets is that there is no place to sit down for long before they start fucking with you. At night you never get any decent length of sleep and in the day you still get no rest. This is a great recipe for severe mental instability. And it's always good to add some alcohol to that. I think they call it “incomprehensible demoralization” or something like that.

This last night with my alcohol and sex partner I was supposed to be somewhere else. By the grace of God I had been accepted into a program for the homeless called “Project Hospitality.” Every afternoon about 30-40 of us destitutes would meet at the Salvation Army at 5:00 and vans from one church or another would come pick us up. They fed us generously, gave us showers and whatever clothing they could, and set out mats and blankets on the church floor so that we could sleep. One thing I'll never forget is how ungrateful some of my whining and complaining fellow bums were. Of course I'd never be like that. I'm a decent person, right? Just a decent person in a bad situation. Right.

Well, every now and then my girl would feel some need for sex and drama, and she'd sneak me into her room for another night of drunken chaos. I have a sneaking suspicion that I may have engaged in some emotional manipulation a few times here and there. Of course I always told myself that she was the crazy one; she was the insane drunk. I might still believe a little of that today. But today, with six months of sobriety behind me, I am continuously shocked and embarrassed with the gradual realizations of just how insane and delusional I was.

When I left her place six months ago this morning, I was in a panic because I hadn't shown up for the homeless program the night before and I knew that I was about to be kicked out of my fifth and last chance with Tucson's homeless shelters. I wandered around in a panic all that day still highly intoxicated from the night before and trying desperately to sober up. I showed up at the Salvation Army at the regular time and again by the grace of God, I somehow slipped through the cracks and got away with it. That's when I started working my second step. There is no doubt in my mind that this is when God took hold of me, slapped a molecule of sense into me, and started to turn my life around.

The next day I went to the AA Alano Club on a whim. For the millionth and last time I wanted to quit drinking and I was finally broken and scared shitless. I knew that I had reached the point where I was going to die if I kept drinking. It wouldn't be a quick death, either. I knew that I had finally crossed the line where the next step would be an irreversible death of my soul and I would soon be sleeping in my own drool and piss not caring where my body fell, no longer caring about trying to look clean. I knew that I was about to get that far away glassy look in the eyes of someone who has left the building. The very last shreds of my delusional dignity had finally collapsed and for the first time it occurred to me that I might not have all the answers.

And that's what saved me. I came to AA completely willing, ready to be honest, and desperately open-minded. I guess I'm just lucky like that. I had absolutely no fight left in me. I was just smart enough to know that I didn't know a damned thing about how to live sober. So I should probably shut up and listen and do what the fuck I'm told. Again, I believe that I was insanely lucky to have been completely smashed by alcohol. I heard someone say once in a meeting, “I wish you as much pain as it takes.” Today I think I understand that. I had very little ego left in me and fortunately I got a sponsor right away who saw to it that I got rid of that too.

At my first meeting, someone gave me a pocket Big Book and I dove into that like my life depended on it, which it did and does. Halfway through that I went and got myself the full version with all the stories in it because I had heard someone say that the stories will tell you how other people found God. I read that whole thing – not just the first 164 like they tell you – in less than a week. I needed God and I needed sobriety Right Now, damn it! And I'm one of those freaks that loves to read and write and so I figured I was definitely going to be able to master this thing.

Six months later I can say happily with hope and optimism that I haven't mastered anything other than the talent of being able to prove to myself on a moment's notice how idiotic and destructive self-will can be.

That first week of sobriety I began a simple prayer like a message in a bottle thrown into the vast cosmos. “If you're out there God, if you find this, please help me.” Basically I was just praying for something or someone to pray to and it turns out that was exactly the right thing to pray for. I haven't heard any bells or whistles or angels singing. The sky doesn't open up and give me warm fuzzies – well, actually it does sometimes. But I just count that as an occasional bonus. I have never asked God to show himself to me or prove himself to me or any crap like that because I have been learning that whenever I get that big huge “me” out of the way and look past that delusional construct of “my” mind, God is right there – all over the fucking place.

After I'd prayed my simple prayer for a while and began to gain a little confidence that there was someone on the other end of the line listening. I started a new prayer equally simple. I asked God to direct my thinking. I said, “Alright God, I got out of bed this morning, I put my clothes on, I have a general idea of what I need to do today, now I trust you to handle all of the details.”

It turns out that those prayers saved my life. I don't know where I got the idea to pray them. Maybe it was God. And ever since, my prayers have remained simple. I don't pray for work or food or anything material. I don't pray for relationships or happiness or comfort. I don't even pray for world peace. For a while I prayed that God's will be done until I realized that God's probably going to get his way whether I pray for it or not. Today my prayers are mostly wordless. When it comes to spirituality and my relationship with God, I just don't trust words. My experience is that words are too closely connected to the bullshit that keeps coming out of this broken machine on top of my neck. That's a pretty hardcore realization for someone who's spent the last few decades wanting more than anything else to be a writer. Today my prayers and my meditations are intertwined. They say that prayer is talking to God and meditation is listening. I have found that by doing both at the same time and keeping words out of it I have a real conscious contact with God. Like a conduit that flows back and forth in a rhythm with my breath and my heartbeat and the sunrise and the moonset and the seasons and most importantly the vibration of this moment right now. Okay. There. See? All that hokey pokey hoohah? That's all that words'll get you. I make no effort to define God – I don't need any kind of label or doctrine or dogma to make it work for me. I simply believe that there is something out there that has a better and bigger grip on things than I do and I trust that it's doing a very good job of it – certainly better than any of the genius ideas that I've come up with.

So for the past six months I've mostly kept my mouth shut and I've done a lot of listening and watching and very slowly, one day at a time, I've been learning how to stay sober today.

Now, regarding sobriety and recovery, it turns out they are two completely separate things. In reality it was very, very easy for me to quit drinking. I just decided that I didn't want to die and the compulsion to drink mostly vanished. What has been difficult these past six months is the living part. Once I stopped numbing my fears and resentments with alcohol, I had to start facing this incredible thing called life and that has been at times an emotionally devastating experience. I mean sometimes I just want to puke. I started hiding from reality in my late teens with various hallucinogenic and stupefying drugs and then I grew up and found shelter in alcohol. And all those years, the world never went away no matter how hard I tried to make it. Today I am physically 42 years old with some serious mileage on me and yet I am emotionally as mature as a 19 year old with the lack of life skills to prove it. The good news is that by the grace of God I still have a few brain cells left, I am fairly healthy, I have an unstoppable optimism, and my key ingredient is a deadly realistic sense of humor that keeps me from beating the shit out of myself and others.

So today I trust God and I listen to others who have some experience with learning how to live sober. I constantly remind myself that I don't have it all figured out and never will – that's God's job. I constantly thank God for doing such a good job. I don't beat myself up over the past. I look at the future as an imaginary fiction and I make every effort to thoroughly live this here moment right now. This moment I am sober. This moment God is leading the way.

If I had it all to do over again, would I change anything? No.

Long, Strange Trip

2009-05-20T23:04:00.002-07:00

Just a quick update. I really have no time anymore... I made the mistake of praying for help with my laziness. Now I have a 75 hour a week job running a kitchen again. It's very different this time around. I'm not hungover or overwhelmingly stressed all the time. I can almost wrap my brain around this job.

There are many things at this job and at the halfway house that I'm still living at that would have caused me great stress and anger in the past - reasons to drink. But I'm learning now to approach life from a whole new angle: responsibly and maturely? Holy crap! What madness is he speaking? Whatever. I'm still completely fucked up in the head and hardcore immature - but that will improve over time as I learn the strange craft of "growing up" without booze.

Anyways. That's what it is for now.

Life on Life's Terms

2009-04-18T17:55:00.002-07:00

I've been sober 92 days now. Yes, it's very different. No, it's not different at all. Basically it boils down to not having an escape anymore. I have to face shit. Fuck. Do I have to? Yes, Scott, you have to. Fuck!

There is something that makes it a bit easier, and that's giving up control .... control that I obviously never had anyways. I'm gonna shut up about this. I find that I know absolutely nothing about staying sober. Everything I ever thought I knew about staying sober never worked. My genius thinking got me nowhere but fucked up. So I just work on trying to forget everything I thought I knew. I work on trying to let God show me right ways to think. That seems to be going in a good direction right now.

Anyways, Hi Blog. I might be posting again soon.

Whoa... too much thinking for now. I'm gonna take a break and go to work.

Acceptance

2009-03-26T09:33:00.002-07:00

And acceptance is the answer to all my problems today. When I am disturbed, it is because I find some person, place, thing, or situation - some fact of my life - unacceptable to me, and I can find no serenity until I accept that person, place, thing, or situation as being exactly the way it is supposed to be at this moment. Nothing, absolutely nothing, happens in God's world by mistake. Until I could accept my alcoholism, I could not stay sober; unless I accept life completely on life's terms, I cannot be happy. I need to concentrate not so much on what needs to be changed in the world as on what needs to be changed in me and in my attitudes.

- Alcoholics Anonymous, The Big Book

2009 Reading

2009-02-24T18:12:00.001-07:00

What I've been reading this year...

Sparks, Nicholas – A Walk To Remember
Steinbeck, John – Tortilla Flat
Hesse, Hermann – Steppenwolf
Fitzgerald, F. Scott – The Great Gatsby
Hesse, Hermann – Siddhartha
Shreve, Anita – The Pilot's Wife
Hesse, Hermann – Magister Ludi - The Glass Bead Game
Lao Tzu - Tao Te Ching – Victor H. Mair Translation
Alcoholics Anonymous – The Big Book (4th Ed.)
Ludlum, Robert – The Cry of the Halidon
Solzhenitsyn, Alexander – One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
Hamsun, Knut – Growth of the Soil
Baty, Chris – No Plot? No Problem!
Koontz, Dean – Darkfall
Koontz, Dean – Sole Survivor
Alcoholics Anonymous – Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions
Alcoholics Anonymous – Living Sober
Koontz, Dean – Velocity

Off The Grid

2009-01-03T11:45:00.006-07:00

Until further notice, I don't exist anymore. Nicole - you need to get a clue. Family - my brother-in-law is the only one who's bothered to read this. Others - well whatever, enjoy what's already here. I have created a private blog for myself because I need to keep writing. Maybe someday this blog will continue. I am now on my own. See ya.

Update January 26, 2009

I'm sorry if this withdrawal seems selfish. There are many issues I need to deal with right now. I know that I am to blame for much of it.

A while ago I voluntarily checked myself into a halfway-house recovery program and I am working very hard with some knowledgeable and experienced people to help me defeat the demon of my alcoholism. This is going to take some time and a lot of bullshit is surfacing. I have, of course, been doing a phenomenal amount of writing, but it is all of an extremely personal nature and therefore not being posted to this public blog.

I expect skepticism. I expect the usual, "So what's different this time, Scott?" After 42 years of my bullshit it just fits. But at the moment, I think it's best if I make myself unavailable for that sort of discouragement.

The good news is that Igor Sapien is alive and well and will someday soon return to the path of creative excellence that he was always destined for.

Update February 18, 2009

Today I have been sober for 33 days. Yeah. Put that in your pipe and smoke it. I have put away that stupid alcohol-induced novel (Fanatic Gardens) that I've been working on for almost 15 years and I've begun a brand new sobriety-induced novel. Things are looking good.

2008 Reading List

2009-01-02T12:50:00.002-07:00

I read a couple books last year:

Bach, Richard – Illusions
Bach, Richard – Jonathan Livingston Seagull
Baldacci, David – Total Control
Besant, Annie – Lotus Leaves For The Young – Legends and Tales
Brown, Dan – The DaVinci Code
Burroughs, Augusten – Dry
Burroughs, Augusten – Running With Scissors
Calvino, Italo – If On A Winter’s Night A Traveller
Faulkner, William – As I Lay Dying
Faulkner, William – Intruder In The Dust
Faulkner, William – The Sound and the Fury
Garcia Marquez, Gabriel – One Hundred Years of Solitude
Gibson, William – Mona Lisa Overdrive
Ginsberg, Allen – Howl and Other Poems
Hamsun, Knut – Pan
Heller, Richard and Rachael – The 13th Apostle
Hemingway, Ernest – 49 Short Stories
Hemingway, Ernest – A Farewell to Arms
Hemingway, Ernest – Islands In the Stream
Hemingway, Ernest – The Green Hills of Africa
Hemingway, Ernest – The Old Man and The Sea
Hesse, Hermann – Demian
Joyce, James – Ulysses
Kesey, Ken – One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
Koontz, Dean – Brother Odd
Koontz, Dean – Forever Odd
Kundera, Milan – The Joke
Kundera, Milan – The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Leonard, Elmore – Pagan Babies
Levy, David H. – More Things In Heaven And Earth
Mailer, Norman – The Castle in the Forest
Markandaya, Kamala – Nectar In A Sieve
Naipaul, V.S. – The Mystic Masseur
Robbins, Tom – Even Cowgirls Get the Blues
Robbins, Tom – Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates
Robbins, Tom – Jitterbug Perfume
Robbins, Tom – Skinny Legs and All
Steinbeck, John – Burning Bright
Steinbeck, John – Cannery Row
Steinbeck, John – Grapes of Wrath
Steinbeck, John – Of Mice and Men
Steinbeck, John – The Pearl
Steinbeck, John – The Red Pony
Steinbeck, John – The Winter Of Our Discontent
Steinbeck, John – Travels with Charley
Twain, Mark – Roughing It
Twain, Mark – The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Voltaire – Candide
Vonnegut, Mark – The Eden Express

Scott Allen Davis For Christmas

2008-12-26T15:15:00.002-07:00

have you ever seen a dry rain?
neither have i
notice how things are darker when they're wet
what kind of humor is this?
shake my hand and say goodbye
look me in the eyes
your hands are shaking
what's that all about?
she said, "i'll call you later"
and then she never did
my sleeping bag is missing
my telephone is overflowing with emptiness
and hey - ! i've got a cigarette in my hand
and cash in my pocket

the asphalt is glistening
there is no color to the sky
the air looks like what comes out
of my mouth when i exhale
purple and gold and blue pass by
and then something small
that is red
black things go round and round
brown things stop dead in their tracks

the pigeons in the alleys
don't even notice me
they move aside as an afterthought
every here and there
is something bright and shiny
that'll be thirty-seven cents, please
and thanks

this is what nature is doing right now
how much of that can you fit
into your bag
just enough?
okay, we'll see
you think this is some kind of joke?
very funny
yeah, it's disposable

every time you hang up on me
we stop talking
see how that works?
do you?
it moves forward while it's not
moving at all
the molecules now in my brain
they have something to say about all this
and they just can't find the
word for it
steam rises and tears fall
nothing rhymes with this
so there you are
see how nicely that fits?
black things shiny things going round and round
a man dressed in brown standing under a
cypress tree to avoid the rain
it goes just like that

when the water bounces off the pavement
it's almost like it wants to
return to the sky
it has a wet voice
and you should hear the things it whispers

it carries walt whitman in its backpack
it has a fucking headache and its
legs are tired
it has sympathy for the birds that are
cold and wet
it talks to itself and you can't hear
what is being said
because these are secret words

yesterday i got scott allen davis for christmas
he was hiding out in an alley and he
didn't want anyone to look at him
eyes averted silent sweat and loneliness
he grunted once or twice
something about
summertime
hush little baby - don't you cry

you think what comes out when i exhale is something
you should see what i inhale
it's tasty and it's life
full and rich
exhaust fumes and farts
deadly trails holes broken pieces
rainbows seen through squinty eyed
shadows

Homeless Memorial

2008-12-20T09:14:00.002-07:00

Yesterday I attended the Primavera Foundation Homeless Memorial held at Evergreen Cemetery in Tucson. There were several speakers, some sad guitar music sung in Spanish, and then Taps was played by a lone trumpeteer out among the little grave markers. There's a little corner at the northwest part of the cemetery that has been reserved for the homeless for many years. Now that section is full and so they just cremate people and place their ashes in little lockers without names.

Between 11-07 and 10-08, there were 45 homeless who died without name or family, 30 homeless who died with names and family, 53 homeless who died with names only and no family, and 183 people died crossing the border.

I wanted to think of this as a funeral for my father that I never got to attend. Let's just say it was powerful and good for me.

The following poem was read and I liked it very much, so here it is:

What The Living Do
by Marie Howe

Johnny, the kitchen sink has been clogged for days, some utensil probably fell down there.
And the Drano won’t work but smells dangerous, and the crusty dishes have piled up

waiting for the plumber I still haven’t called. This is the everyday we spoke of.
It’s winter again: the sky’s a deep headstrong blue, and the sunlight pours through

the open living room windows because the heat’s on too high in here, and I can’t turn it off.
For weeks now, driving, or dropping a bag of groceries in the street, the bag breaking,

I’ve been thinking: This is what the living do. And yesterday, hurrying along those
wobbly bricks in the Cambridge sidewalk, spilling my coffee down my wrist and sleeve,

I thought it again, and again later, when buying a hairbrush: This is it.
Parking. Slamming the car door shut in the cold. What you called that yearning.

What you finally gave up. We want the spring to come and the winter to pass. We want
whoever to call or not call, a letter, a kiss – we want more and more and then more of it.

But there are moments, walking, when I catch a glimpse of myself in the window glass,
say, the window of the corner video store, and I’m gripped by a cherishing so deep

for my own blowing hair, chapped face, and unbuttoned coat that I’m speechless:
I am living, I remember you.

Strobe Shadow

2008-12-17T14:55:00.003-07:00

"I'm gonna roll, man. God bless you. Goodbye, man."

Things she said to me
A death howl cry
the moon has gone down
No more wandering in the desert
It's too dark and footsteps
just land where they do
a spiny aggressive cactus with nice legs
I will mourn what could have been
Fuck God because of the Power of Her Forgetting.

She said something about hiding in a coffin of flowers
when the love of her life came looking for her
She undefines aberration
Goes where she wants
Loses everything

Things she said to me
Talking to my cock - she said what a good thing
and then, face twisting expression changing
her eyes got mean as they dragged
from my crotch - up my chest and lingered on my
man-nipples then slowly measured
the blood flow through the veins on my neck.
She looked on and loved my whiskers
loved the feel of them on her face now and
the remembrance of them in her pussy.
Then her eyes landed on mine
forceful and brilliant and sudden
her concentric rings of brown and dark-brown
ringed one after another on the spikes
of the brown, hazel-star explosions
of my eyes
and then she clutched.
The fear in her eyes was ancient.
And she said - "Now that's a bad man."
Looked in my eyes briefly then closed hers.

So many times in so many people I have seen it
A soul that has almost moved but won't
The fear, the fear.
And the man holding this pen and moving it
he's afraid, yes.
Where do you go from here?
When love has not existed then suddenly does?
All you really can do is try to remember
what was beautiful
what is
keep that foggy halo around rainbow memories
touch that golden sun every morning
dip your fingers into the new flavors
use that wider vision.

I've watched a rainbow give away it's secrets
I've heard the sun whisper things as it's thinking about rising
I've prayed to the moon while she was praying to me
I've spit up on my own shoes.

What is that thing there in your hands?
What are you going to do with it?
Where the fuck did you get that thing?
Holy Shit! - that might be worth something.

A certain amount of syllable
and the words that sound just right
abstract thoughts keep/kept tumbling down
not a damn bit of this
makes any fucking sense
but there it is it is what it is

I only have five arms to juggle with at this stage
in my growing
she was just too much
maybe after we've devolved a few times
back to something true
the Tao never is when it's defined

Mystery
the who you are
i want to and will
never know

Invidious
defending a lone truth
against an
irrational power

Beauty
meant to be
never allowed
secret silent - is

Lavender with a
deadly bright yellow
an alluring scent
two or three words between

The closer I get to a moving train
the more turbulence there is
my mind begins to spin
and then I am flash-hypnotized

I get to watch the show through the window
right before my eyes, Igor accidentally kills himself
and I'm not sure whether that was terror or
a great big smile when he died.

There's a place on this side of that side
where I live and it's quite real
bugs drop out of trees and gum sticks to your shoes
you get emails worth fortunes and
hey-how-ya-doin's from people
you don't know.
Some people have thoughts and
most of them don't.
Everyone feels something.
You can sit under a tree
on a piece of concrete or a log
watch the thunder and look for a place to light a candle
fabricate some temporary protection
put up a concerted effort at really caring.
Wait! - this is all about you - no, it's about me - no, it's
about us - or you - or me - or you
me didn't read you mind
you didn't read me mind
so we're both wrong --
and it would only be the right thing to try
so of course we won't
it would only be the right thing
and we're all smart and shit.

There was a young man from Nantucket
whose brain fit nice in a bucket
He listened and learned
worried and yearned

O happy day
My sweet Lord
O happy fucking day
My sweet fucking Lord
O fucking A!
Sweet Fuck Yeah!

Tell yourself invidious stories
of my odious nature
I will mourn the power
of your forgetting
If that sounds familiar I'm sure
it's because you've heard it before.

One drop at a time - this rain
falling almost secret
Surprise! - there's another one
didn't expect that now,
didja?

I gotta ask....
if you're so innocent,
why you got at least two pair of
crotchless hose and all them
devastating panties?
Why you keep that shaved?
Why it embarrasses you?

Mud formed
and solidified
temporary

yellow and black
caution!
she hides and
makes-believe
and you
are
culpable

She has flowers
she found in an
encyclopedia or a dictionary
and then she has flowers
she's been carrying around
every day of her life.
you can smell them on her
and if she wants to
she'll give you one.

the difference
between rain and tears -
a heartbeat

one foot moving forward
off-balance, alone
falls

shadow moving
in which direction?
that way!

dinosaurs in the distance
with no sound
and yeah, they're real

every word you say
infallible, immortal -
what?

Too much salt
and too much sugar
and not enough pepper, lemon,
or dirt.

Strobe shadow of passing train cars
rumbling distant rhythm
she reads me poems and sings a gentle memory
she leans her head on and holds me
she whispers her wisdom so quiet I can't hear
then sudden leaps and bites and tugs and pulls
accusations and fears and the full spectrum of anti-beauty
the easiest route is to wait
let her flood abate
give her time to distract herself
then she will again hold me and
for a brief time again
there will be love

It is the highest quality of love
captured in little bubble perfect moments
like I am swimming in a long river of shit
and when I lift my head to breathe
I inhale nectar.

- Igor Sapien, December 17, 2008

Too Much Else To Do Besides Suffer

2008-12-15T12:10:00.005-07:00

Last night I dreamt that a hummingbird twice landed on my outstretched hand. She sat and looked at me and I was afraid. I held up my other hand to protect my eyes. Then she landed on my shoulder and nuzzled up against my neck and I was afraid she would drill through my skin and I awoke clutching at my neck. Why was I afraid?

"She started Jitterbugging with me - but just very nice and easy, not corny. She was really good. All you had to do was touch her. And when she turned around, her pretty little butt twitched so nice and all. She knocked me out. I mean it. I was half in love with her by the time we sat down. That's the thing about girls. Every time they do something pretty, even if they're not much to look at, or even if they're sort of stupid, you fall half in love with them, and then you never know where the hell you are. Girls. Jesus Christ. They can drive you crazy. They really can."
- J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

"But while I was sitting down, I saw something that drove me crazy. Somebody'd written 'Fuck you' on the wall. It drove me damn near crazy .... I kept wanting to kill whoever'd written it. I figured it was some perverty bum that'd sneaked in the school late at night to take a leak or something and then wrote it on the wall. I kept picturing myself catching him at it, and how I'd smash his head on the stone steps till he was good and goddam dead and bloody .... I went down by a different staircase, and I saw another 'Fuck you' on the wall. I tried to rub it off with my hand again, but this one was scratched on, with a knife or something. It wouldn't come off. It's hopeless, anyway. If you had a million years to do it in, you couldn't rub out even half the 'Fuck you' signs in the world. It's impossible .... It was so nice and peaceful. then, all of a sudden, you'd never guess what I saw on the wall. Another 'Fuck you.' It was written with a red crayon or something .... That's the whole trouble. You can't ever find a place that's nice and peaceful, because there isn't any. You may think there is, but once you get there, when you're not looking, somebody'll sneak up and write 'Fuck you' right under your nose. Try it sometime. I think, even, if I ever die, and they stick me in a cemetery, and I have a tombstone and all, it'll say "Holden Caulfield" on it, and then what year I was born and what year I died, and then right under that it'll say 'Fuck you.' I'm positive, in fact."
- J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

"Danny's a night wanderer now, an early-morning man, a lonely, dragging thing. When he asks you for a quarter for a skull-buster his eyes beg you to forgive him because he can't forgive himself."
- John Steinbeck, The Winter of Our Discontent

Today's word: aberration
noun. a deviating from the right path or usual course of action; a mental disorder, especially of a minor or temporary nature.

1. He realized that her unquestioning trust was but an aberration.
2. His boisterous behavior was an aberration brought on by the whiskey.
3. Her love was a welcome aberration to his life.
4. As an aberration, he decided to look for a job.

"You're letting yourself get too unnecessarily tangled up in sad fate. Let's figure a way to clean things up before it gets further, makes writing paranoid and life lousy. It's strictly situation, external, not absolute and fixed fate for you unless you leave it be fixed fate. Am not being analytic-moral. None of us are fast and strong enough to battle society forever really, it's too sad and grey. Just felt you were feeling too crazy lately and am putting out friend-hand. Must not let situation drift to intolerability. We got too much else to do besides suffer."
- Allen Ginsberg in letter to Jack Kerouac from Carolyn Cassady's Heart Beat: My Life with Jack & Neal

This morning I finished Steinbeck's The Winter of Our Discontent and I don't get where the blurbs and the critics call it an angry novel. Truth be told, I was shocked and impressed at the level of humor he gave his protagonist. Kudos Steinbeck! Laughter is key!

Right now Tucson has a big blanket of grey stretched from horizon to horizon. There are brilliant blue holes poking through. Beneath that blanket smaller clouds are dark grey wannabe ominous. Sometimes the sun or the daytime full moon pierces through creating amazing explosions.

"In hell I'll mourn the power of your forgetting---"
- Brent Hendricks, from Ace of Hearts

Whitman's Lincoln

2008-12-14T15:49:00.002-07:00

081214.3:50pm

Today I finally bought my own copy of Whitman's Leaves of Grass and it included the text of Specimen Days. That's the book that I bought for Nicole for her birthday (our birthday). Here is the excerpt that inspired my poem Walt Whitman For My Birthday:

"The Inauguration - March 4 - The President very quietly rode down to the Capitol in his own carriage, by himself, on a sharp trot, about noon, either because he wish'd to be on hand to sign bills, &c., or to get rid of marching in line with the absurd procession, the muslin Temple of Liberty, and pasteboard Monitor. I saw him on his return, at three o'clock, after the performance was over. He was in his plain two-horse barouche, and look'd very much worn and tired; the lines, indeed, of vast responsibilities, intricate questions, and demands of life and death, cut deeper than ever upon his dark brown face; yet all the old goodness, tenderness, sadness and canny shrewdness, underneath the furrows. (I never see that man without feeling that he is one to become personally attach'd to, for his combination of purest, heartiest tenderness, and native Western even rudest forms of manliness.)"

- Walt Whitman, Specimen Days

"He hated it when you called him a moron. All morons hate it when you call them a moron."

- J.D. Salinger - The Catcher in the Rye

The Lost Jazz of All Saturdays

2008-12-13T12:48:00.002-07:00

081213.12:10pm

Major score today. $5.80 at a thrift store:

Herman Hesse - Magister Ludi, Peter Camenzind, Demian
Aldous Huxley - The Genius and the Goddess
Joseph Heller - Catch-22
Samuel R. Delaney - Nova
Bromberg & Liebb - Hot Words for SAT I - 350 words you need to know

and the cake:

Allen Ginsberg - Planet News - 1960-1967 - Pocket Poets #23
Allen Ginsberg - Reality Sandwiches - Pocket Poets #18
Allen Ginsberg - Howl and Other Poems - Pocket Poets #4

Yes, please.

"....sweet trees in the nights of another spring....
....hearkening the lost jazxz of all Saturdays....
....an ageless monument to love in the imagination....
....consumed by the invisible poem...."

- Allen Ginsberg, from The Green Automobile, Reality Sandwiches

Oh yeah.... and here's the whole thing:

The Green Automobile

If I had a Green Automobile
I'd go find my old companion
in his house on the Western ocean.
Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!

I'd honk my horn at his manly gate,
inside his wife and three
children sprawl naked
on the living room floor.

He'd come running out
to my car full of heroic beer
and jump screaming at the wheel
for he is the greater driver.

We'd pilgrimage to the highest mount
of our earlier Rocky Mountain visions
laughing in each others arms,
delight surpassing the highest Rockies,

and after old agony, drunk with new years,
bounding toward the snowy horizon
blasting the dashboard with original bop
hot rod on the mountain

we'd batter up the cloudy highway
where angels of anxiety
careen through the trees
and scream out of the engine.

We'd burn all night on the jackpine peak
seen from Denver in the summer dark,
forestlike unnatural radiance
illuminating the mountaintop:

childhood youthtime age & eternity
would open like sweet trees
in the nights of another spring
and dumbfound us with love,

for we can see together
the beauty of the souls
hidden like diamonds
in the clock of the world,

like Chinese magicians can
confound the immortals
with our intellectuality
hidden in the mist,

in the Green Automobile
which I have invented
imagined and visioned
on the roads of the world

more real than the engine
on a track in the desert
purer than Greyhound and
swifter than physical jetplane.

Denver! Denver! we'll return
roaring across the City & County Building lawn
which catches the pure emerald flame
streaming in the wake of our auto.

This time we'll buy up the city!
I cashed a great check in my skull bank
to found a miraculous college of the body
up on the bus terminal roof.

But first we'll drive the stations of downtown,
poolhall flophouse jazzjoint jail
whorehouse down Folsom
to the darkest alleys of Larimer

paying respects to Denver's father
lost on the railroad tracks,
stupor of wine and silence
hallowing the slum of his decades,

salute him and his saintly suitcase
of dark muscatel, drink
and smash the sweet bottles
on Diesels in allegiance.

Then we go driving drunk on boulevards
where armies march and still parade
staggering under the invisible
banner of Reality --

hurtling through the street
in the auto of our fate
we share an archangelic cigarette
and tell each other's fortunes:

fames of supernatural illumination,
bleak rainy gaps of time,
great art learned in desolation
and we beat apart after six decades....

and on an asphalt crossroad,
deal with each other in princely
gentleness once more, recalling
famous dead talks of other cities.

The windshield's full of tears,
rain wets our naked breasts,
we kneel together in the shade
amid the traffic of night in paradise

and now renew the solitary vow
we made each other take
in Texas, once:
I can't inscribe here ....
......
.....

How many Saturday nights will be
made drunken by this legend?
How will young Denver come to mourn
her forgotten sexual angel?

How many boys will strike the black piano
in imitation of the excess of a native saint?
Or girls fall wanton under his spectre in the high
schools of melancholy night?

While all the time in Eternity
in the wan light of this poem's radio
we'll sit behind forgotten shades
hearkening the lost jazz of all Saturdays.

Neal, we'll be real heroes now
in a war between our cocks and time:
let's be the angels of the world's desire
and take the world to bed with us before
we die.

Sleeping alone, or with companion,
girl or fairy sheep or dream,
I'll fail of lacklove, you, satiety:
all men fall, our fathers fell before,

but resurrecting that lost flesh
is but a moment's work of mind:
an ageless monument to love
in the imagination:

memorial built out of our own bodies
consumed by the invisible poem --
We'll shudder in Denver and endure
though blood and wrinkles blind our eyes.

So this Green Automobile:
I give you in flight
a present, a present
from my imagination.

We will go riding
over the Rockies,
we'll go on riding
all night long until dawn,

then back to your railroad, the SP
your house and your children
and broken leg destiny
you'll ride down the plains

in the morning: and back
to my visions, my office
and eastern apartment
I'll return to New York.

NY 1953

- Allen Ginsberg, The Green Automobile, Reality Sandwiches

On Burroughs' Work

The method must be purest meat
and no symbolic dressing,
actual visions & actual prisons
as seen then and now.

Prisons and visions presented
with rare descriptions
corresponding exactly to those
of Alcatraz and Rose.

A naked lunch is natural to us,
we eat reality sandwiches.
But allegories are so much lettuce.
Don't hide the madness.

- Allen Ginsberg, On Burroughs' Work, Reality Sandwiches

The Whole Secret

2008-12-06T16:25:00.003-07:00

"I just did what I did because I did it - that's the whole secret."

- Walt Whitman, from Horace Traubel's With Walt Whitman in Camden, Vol. 3

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

- Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken, from "Mountain Interval"

"I am," I said
To no one there
An no one heard at all
Not even the chair
"I am," I cried
"I am," said I
And I am lost, and I can't even say why
Leavin' me lonely still

Did you ever read about a frog who dreamed of bein' a king
And then became one
Well except for the names and a few other changes
I you talk about me, the story's the same one

But I got an emptiness deep inside
And I've tried, but it won't let me go
And I'm not a man who likes to swear
But I never cared for the sound of being alone

- Neil Diamond, from "I Am, I Said."

Trippers and askers surround me,
People I meet, the effect upon me of my early life or the ward and city I live in, or the nation,
The latest dates, discoveries, inventions, societies, authors old and new,
My dinner, dress, associates, looks, compliments, dues,
The real or fancied indifference of some man or woman I love,
The sickness of one of my folks or of myself, or ill-doing or loss or lack of money, or depressions or exaltations,
Battles, the horrors of fratricidal war, the fever of doubtful news, the fitful events;
These come to me days and nights and go from me again,
But they are not the Me myself.

- Walt Whitman, from Song of Myself, 1855

More Things in Heaven and Earth

2008-12-05T12:52:00.002-07:00

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

- Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act 1. Scene V

GO and catch a falling star,
Get with child a mandrake root,
Tell me where all past years are,
Or who cleft the devil's foot,
Teach me to hear mermaids singing,
Or to keep off envy's stinging,
And find
What wind
Serves to advance an honest mind.

If thou be'st born to strange sights,
Things invisible to see,
Ride ten thousand days and nights,
Till age snow white hairs on thee,
Thou, when thou return'st, wilt tell me,
All strange wonders that befell thee,
And swear,
No where
Lives a woman true and fair.

If thou find'st one, let me know,
Such a pilgrimage were sweet;
Yet do not, I would not go,
Though at next door we might meet,
Though she were true, when you met her,
And last, till you write your letter,
Yet she
Will be
False, ere I come, to two, or three.

- John Donne, Song

I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain -- and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.

I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed by the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.

I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet
When far away an interrupted cry
Came over houses from another street,

But not to call me back or say good-bye;
And further still at an unearthly height,
O luminary clock against the sky

Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.
I have been one acquainted with the night.

- Robert Frost, Acquainted With The Night, from "New Hampshire", 1923

What It Is

2008-12-05T12:40:00.002-07:00

It is what it is.

I haven't been putting up any new posts for a while and will not for a while more. I have been and will be preoccupied for some time with being sober and working and finishing the final draft of my novel, Fanatic Gardens, I am also in mourning over the loss of what I believe is the only true love I've had so far in this fanatic life. Silly pathetic me.

As usual, however, I am doing much reading and studying and I will sometimes post excerpts and quotes and tasty tidbits from my mental journeys.

Twinkle, twinkle, little star,
How I wonder what you are!
Up above the world so high,
Like a diamond in the sky.

When the blazing sun is gone,
When he nothing shines upon,
Then you show your little light,
Twinkle, twinkle, all the night.

Then the trav'ller in the dark,
Thanks you for your tiny spark,
He could not see which way to go,
If you did not twinkle so.

In the dark blue sky you keep,
And often thro' my curtains peep,
For you never shut your eye,
Till the sun is in the sky.

'Tis your bright and tiny spark,
Lights the trav'ller in the dark:
Tho' I know not what you are,
Twinkle, twinkle, little star.

- Jane Taylor, The Star, 1806

Somewhere over the rainbow
Way up high,
There's a land that I heard of
Once in a lullaby.
Somewhere over the rainbow
Skies are blue,
And the dreams that you dare to dream
Really do come true.

Someday I'll wish upon a star
And wake up where the clouds are far
Behind me.
Where troubles melt like lemon drops
Away above the chimney tops
That's where you'll find me.

Somewhere over the rainbow
Bluebirds fly.
Birds fly over the rainbow.
Why then, oh why can't I?

If happy little bluebirds fly
Beyond the rainbow
Why, oh why can't I?

- H. Arlen & E.Y. Harburg, Over The Rainbow, 1939

Steady Breathing

2008-12-04T14:18:00.003-07:00

"Cezanne advised brave isolation to create 'an optic' --- but by God the holier vision is advanced by lovers, & by far the happiest route."

- Nicole B.

All Nature seems at work. Slugs leave their lair--
The bees are stirring--birds are on the wing--
And Winter, slumbering in the open air,
Wears on his smiling face a dream of Spring!
And I, the while, the sole unbusy thing,
Nor honey make, nor pair, nor build, nor sing.

Yet well I ken the banks where amaranths blow,
Have traced the fount whence streams of nectar flow.
Bloom, O ye amaranths! bloom for whom ye may,
For me ye bloom not! Glide, rich streams, away!
With lips unbrighten'd, wreathless brow, I stroll:
And would you learn the spells that drowse my soul?
Work without Hope draws nectar in a sieve,
And Hope without an object cannot live.

- Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Work Without Hope

Today and Forever

2008-12-01T10:38:00.004-07:00

We are unutterably alone, essentially, especially in the things most intimate and most important to us.

- Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet, 5 April 1903

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

Ruth, a Moabite, had come while Boaz slept,
and now lay at his feet, who knows what light
from what door in the heavens finding her breast
naked, tender to its stirring as his dreams.
But Boaz did not know Ruth came to him,
and Ruth did not know what God asked of her.
The night breathed out a freshness from wild
clumps of asphodels over the hills of Judah.
The dark was nuptial, and august, and solemn.
Hidden angels must have hovered over them,
for Ruth saw in the night sky, here and there,
a dark blue movement like a wing.
The breath of Boaz sleeping mixed
with a dull hush of brookwater in the moss.
It was the time of year when lilies open
and let go their sweetness on the hills.
Ruth was dreaming. Boaz slept. The grass looked black.
And little bells of sheep were trembling on the verge
of silence. Goodness came down clear as starlight
into the great calm where the lions go to drink.
All slept, all, from Ur to Bethlehem.
The stars enameled the deep black of the sky.
A narrow crescent in the low dark
of the west shone, while Ruth wondered,
lying still now, eyes half opened,
under twinging of their lids, what god
of the eternal summer passing dropped
his golden scythe there in that field of stars.

- Victor Hugo, Boaz Asleep, Translated by Brooks Haxton

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

Every time we say goodbye, I die a little
Every time we say goodbye, I wonder why a little
Why the gods above me, who must be in the know
Think so little of me, they allow you to go?

When you're near there's such an air of spring about it
I can hear a lark somewhere begin to sing about it
There's no love song finer but how strange the change
From major to minor every time we say goodbye

When you're near there's such an air of spring about it
I can hear a lark somewhere begin to sing about it
There's no love song finer but how strange the change
From major to minor every time we say goodbye
We say goodbye

- Chet Baker, Every Time We Say Goodbye, The Very Best of Julie London

Hateful Twins

2008-10-19T15:50:00.000-07:00

.3:50 pm

It occurs to me that perhaps we are those children. We already had them in ourselves. Twins born that day. I was Walter and she was Emily and for our own safety and sanity, they separated us at birth. I got California and she got Florida and neither of us regrets that. We became who we are. But what they could not have predicted or expected was that we would meet again someday at the halfway point in our lives and we would fall in love. That is a private thing that only us two would ever share or understand. And something that we had to privately lose together.

What matters is that we are. My knowing that she's out there, being herself - experiencing and writing things in the way that only she can do - that gives me fuel and hope. There is some meaning to all this shit. We got to play little kids for a while and I walked with her through her imaginary gardens and she stopped me every so often and said - hey, look at this. Isn't this beautiful? And I got to hold her arm then. I had the gift of her smile and her bright, wondering eyes in those moments. She gave me back the wonder and the beauty and the poetry. She let me see what it's like to be alive again. She never did write me no fucking haiku. I don't think she can. I think her vision's too big to put into 17 syllables.

But see now - that's where I go. That's what I do. I can break it down into little pieces - haikus - moments of poetic perfection. For Jeebus' sake, that's what Fanatic Gardens is: Appreciating each little tiny bit for what it is. I remember each of her different smiles, each of her different eyeball expressions. I remember the dozen different ways that her face has of telling me that she thinks I'm making this all up. I can see, even with my eyes open, what her face looks like when she gets it.

I wish it could have been something different because I know I hate being alone as much as she does and doesn't, but we had to draw a line on our differences. Which of course sucks because I always thought it was the differences that give fuel to a relationship, soil for growing. But then, lot I know about all that.

Ah fuck all this. I'm approaching inebriation and it's been six (I'm counting the days like a sober person counts) days since I've been with her. Like a damned fool, I'm wondering if she misses me too. And I know it doesn't matter because if she does come back she'll have some other fantastic accusation to put me on edge and when I try for the millionth time to assure her of my loyalty and truth, she won't hear a word I say because she's already got some other unrelated story on her mind.

I can no longer carry her burdens. Whether from guilty conscience or bad experience or a mix of both, she is consistently sure that I am a bad person. I know that's bullshit. I know that 99.9% of our arguments have been when I am cornered to defend myself against her paranoid fantasies. And somehow when I show my fanged face in defense that is proof to her that I am a liar. I can no longer be scapegoat to her fear of being alive. I'm just going to have to wander Fanatic Gardens alone.

Six Feet Ununder

2008-10-17T16:40:00.000-07:00

.4:40 PM

Watched a bug scrabble over loose soil. One of those unnameable and perfectly camouflaged beetles. He was the color of the sand and the dust and he was the color of the ancient dead skin of this palm tree. He moved with unswaying determination. One foot always in front of t'other whether it do something or not. His head was obviously pointed that way cause I watched him a few times moving like a tank ever forward and if he got stuck then all them legs just keep moving kept working kept moving until they finally got it figured. Then he'd just roll right along.

I watched him when he went vertical. Cause I'd seen how the loose soil fucked with him I was curious to see his climbing skills. At this point - damn. He's already at least thirty feet up. Took to that bark like a natural. Funny thing was though - I watched him the first four foot up and he kept stopping. He'd get himself lost and then he'd find a high spot - a pinnacle - his own little lookout on the world - and he'd be lost as fuck cause he knew there was higher to go and he'd got stuck on this little high place. It never once occurred to him to back on down and try again somewhere different. So I had to blow and knock him off his peak to maybe think a different route. And come to think of it, he's probably looking down on me now from six feet above or thirty and he's thinking he's some big shot.

Fuck Grief AND Her Horse

2008-10-16T21:33:00.000-07:00

.9:33 pm

Igor moved because his hip hurt. He shifted over to one of the three positions and the hip stopped hurting and then began to hurt on the other side. His eyes rolled clockwise and his body tried to figure out some balance or another. And then he was dreaming again.

"I'll throw you to the fucking pomegranates," the voice said. "Try me. I'll fucking do it. You jerst wait and see, wait and see and wait. I ain't afeered a you or nunna your kind." And then the voice faded off reciting some foreign alphabet. He twirled the spinach around with the tines of his fork and waited for it to say something else and it didn't and he waited. And then the butter glistened under fluorescent candles and someone familiar pulled up in an unfamiliar truck and tossed a golden apple into his pudding. He rewrote that poem - alright, yessah.

Already they arrived. Long caravans of nobody. They were closely followed by shitloads of Pepsi and tomato ketchup. If you can imagine the sound of a matchbook cover being folded back into place and carefully tucked then you got a fairly good picture.

...............

Well - hell yeah - a man's gonna set and dream and think about stuff that could be. What really makes a man is when he gets up from dreaming and does something about it. I've seen more than enough lazy-gave-up souls in the soup kitchens and I've taken a few turns being one myself to know: that big old bright sunrise over there belongs to us all. They can't tax you on that. The sun don't ask to see your identification before he goes and shines on you.

.................

Fuck Grief!
And the horse she rode in on
I Live to Be Alive
and Joyous
and squirming with ecstasy
in this mud
Take your worms and
one-eyed toads off
to mourn elsewhere
Let yourself figure out
what great moaning mourning
is going to release you
I've waited but I can't wait anymore
You want to curl back up and cry
because life has never been fair
No Shit
Popcorn and Cotton Candy memories
Flowers and butterflies of youth
oh, oh, oooooohhhhhhhhhh
wah, wah, waaaahhhhhhhhhh!