| Suicide was never my preferred way out
Well classes start tomorrow I get to thinking, as Brother Jerusalem balances himself atop that chimney over there. Man I am in my twenties, and this feels almost fake; I should be done with it by now, but here I am, seemingly just beginning. It is frightening when the street life is all I have ever known, and it is my safest route. College scares me, there's too many kids just hanging around, so young and so fresh, and yet here I am, in my old man carcass lumbering down halls and backpack slinging. I have already seen some troubles man, I have already paid some bills and bought some cars and worked some jobs, and that is what life is supposed to be about, or so they say.
These four years are not coming and going fast enough for my coffee and cigarette stained shirts. I can't say I have ever been a big fan of snow fall, but this winter I am under a snowy haze taking car loads of twenty-two years to Franklin, OH with a white and grey cat slung under one arm. In other words, I am moving for the fifth time in under three years. Everybody has got to have a home to call their own; I am beginning to think my home is being in a perpetual state of moving. The funny thing about this is, I have accumulated very few possessions in that time. That could be for a number of reasons, namely my benefactors that took care of and loved me always bought and paid for everything.
I guess I need to break those chains. I am scared. Life on my own? I can't do this, not alone.
But I have to be stronger than that. I have friends here, and there, and from all places, especially Franklin. Especially girls. They'll come to my rescue should the need arise. I hope it doesn't. Tomorrow is the day I sign the lease, and I better bring my best grin. And the especially girls better bring their best dresses, or so my subconscious seems to think. But I know better than that. Girls are the author and final finisher of this period of calamity. And I have learned my lesson, and I am learning it always, because tomorrow I sign my first lease, alone.
Still, despite being wiser, despite gaining knowledge, the allure of the blood red times sometimes wants me back, and his cigar smoking patois is sometimes too difficult to ignore, so when a sweet young lady that I am operating under the assumption is a dancer, gallops serenely into my vision, my first thought is, she's out of my league, and then followed by, I accept your challenge. I can't take that mentality anymore though, because I just can't have it all.
But I want to keep proving to myself that I can.
I am scared. I finally swing back into the digital realm, as my internet connection is now up and running in my new place. Momentarily I was operating in the digital darkness, which I must admit, I enjoyed it slightly. Having no internet connection for a few days helped me to better gather my thoughts, and overall it made me think about things.
This isn't too bad, you know, living alone. It isn't the greatest thing ever, but I answer to no one except the gods of limited time. I only have me to think about now; some would have argued that me is all I have ever thought about, which isn't entirely true. Before, whatever happened during my day, I could always take comfort in knowing that when I would slink back home, I would have someone to confide in, someone to love and talk to, someone that I could think about and protect. It is unfortunate that I have lost that important and darling part of human contact; it was so good to know that someone was just there for me, and that I was just there for someone. But there are positives and negatives to everything, and that is the negative. The positive to having only myself to think about, is that no matter what happens during my day, I can always just slink back home at night and take quiet comfort in my own solitude, to answer to nobody, and to invite a girl over for some fuck, or a boy over for some weed, or whatever bad things twenty-somethings do these days. My options are limitless, and my future is bright years.
Our future is bright years.  
posture, posterity all just myths. So late so cute
so cute lately
so cute so late
so late lately 
......Cut forward to March, and classes are done, and the finals are finished, and thus begins my spring break. So let us smoke until we blow up a lung, and let us drink until we forget our own names because the tragedians are coming out of the woodwork. [End Winter Quarter] The bond of affection that has fallen away
Has given rise to a frightening prospect:
There is no one left to answer to I am always going to love, though. I really want to break this chain, or at least I will say so. Truth be told it has been nearly a decade, and I still find myself roused from slumber by this... Nymph, this aphrodite, this Semiramis, this exquisite goddess of Irish ancestry. In my excited haze, I hastily erect my melancholic countenance, to be entombed and entwined, but coming apart at the seams of this Afghan of a man, of South Western reproach and Armenian delicacy. She had kissed me in the morning in my dirtiest pants, to raise my spirit high above the wreckage of my commonweals.
I am feeling young and skeptical again. Women as malady, a sanguine summer. Apartment bound and underfed, but by choice. It is love that compels me to not eat, and to not sleep; it propels me to the bottle in an attempt to rid myself of this feeling, god I hate it. I hate obsessing over vague caresses, and slight glances, and the swaying of feminine hips... the softness of skin... counting the moles... But she leaves perpetually. She climbs on the highway and leaves me in her wake, wondering the what-ifs.
But weeks later, and I have broken the chains of feigned affection: she is aphrodite alright, and about as real. [End Spring Break]  
Obsession in the middle of the afternoon is this: a kiss that lasted five seconds seemed to stretch out for a mile. None of my keys open her doors.
Her doors
is the midwife scrambling to think of something to say, it grows upon her mind that she is now deprived of her greatest joy, as blood trails in tears. The good news is that she can't have babies. You really don't know how warm you were until the cold reigns on. I will cater to your vices in the breath of network externality. Love is a daunting word that is elaborated by network externality, lumbering onward. That said, I am in love with the building that houses her, and I hope I am speech-singing inside of you. "Wait until the Chinese get here, they love those things"(Dermont 67). The looming Chinese never strays far from our thoughts, do they? Lover, my tongue is on your floor, on the semen. I am like an empty pack of marlboro crumbled up on your lawn. Highway driving is trial with no room for error. But let's back up: When the American people have gone astray, then it is time to take up the biblical judges again. I am feeling her warm resolve all over me. But Brother Jerusalem hitchhikes off the chimney in a mad laughing dash; a laughing man. Laughing man, you have my guns strapped to your ankles. What I love most about you is you. But we can still put this simply: that ominous Roman chain dangling from decades old leather, which is something mommy and Dayton have always done. And here they come, the wretched three words all plunging me. I know what this means, but I really pity death.
Death at night is a thought that never journeys too far from me; seeing is believing. "It has been too long, Jerusalem," in my jubilant voice.
"Yes," he begins, swinging his bruised knuckled hand in sonorous victory, "it certainly has."
With silent recognition, we take up the bikes and ride, sort of going 90 on 91. So you're pregnant, oh god, said i
Yes and it is his she said sternly
Are you going to abort it i had asked wavering
Sensing my lack of resolve she said no i am keeping it
God damn you i said god damn you for this you are just smelling the end of it
then let it be so jack so jack jack this is not yours to keep it is mine to decide
I cleared my throat and the sand of another time
Seated at the dining room table, resembling mahogany. The lamp's light eschewed solidarity as it seemingly breathed in my exhaled smoke and exaltations under the shade, shaped like a skirt. Her hands were rested together, and set out before her with her dark hue in a defiant no, screeching at me quietly, "no."
Lighting up another cigarette; chain smoking, as is common when under duress.
"So you're going to keep it," I exhaled exhaustedly; spilling out the words all over my solid gray shirt.
Eye brow raised at the sound of my melancholic surrender, she replied, "Yes, Jack," running her solid hands through her scalp, emptied of hair, "the baby is mine to keep."
And out come the tears, and in dramatic fashion, "so this is how we end," mumbling, finding the words, "not with a bang but with a birth."
Laughing, she began to rise, and her eyes met mine as she swayed to my side of the table; rounding the edge of it with one chipped fingernail.
"Always one for drama, Jack," she chuckled out from a nearly six foot stature. And me, all speech-singing in my skull, trying to find the right words, or the wrong ones. But in the meantime
Jerusalem and I take Fountain to George, and stop in at Jeremy's for a piss and a couple shots, post-work. Sometimes helps, sometimes always helps. Jerusalem was singing the Creedence, and I was all throwing darts in the basement, born as my father born as my father board as my father board is father as I fucking laugh fucking, and fists in concrete. We are taken to the scene of the crime via Jeremy later on that way. "Thanks kid," I iterated to the clerk, "it helps both ways."
With that, given a sawed-off, I begin to point - hands in the air, pelt and holler, "mother fucker, cash in my hand," saliva pouring unto blackened beards, ravenous like a beaten dog in this Costa Mesa sundown.
Jerusalem's all laughing all the time grabbing bottles and stuffing in jackets the spoils of war.
Cash in my hand I said
And so he does, but I am muzzle bashing to his face anyway, and screaming PELT AND HOLLER, "for the shits and giggles," hiccups Jerusalem. Jeremy's in the car and looks excited behind the wheel, and we think we hear the cops, and so
Out the door, and into the door, all stuffed into the back of a cadillac, and the rubber burning in an arrow forward
Sometimes helps bored as my father effigy in post work. You're more invested in this than I am. As luck would have it I am a parasite, always finding a way to gain some reprieve from the malicious revelry, but what's done is done as the day descends with the setting sun. Mirrored back to Jackie boy: Parting ways
and lips kissed sweetly I lock the door 
"I need to talk to someone with a cigarette," she said. 
(Okay, let's take attendance) All of these roadside poems (Dave Cambron) Honey suckle kisses surround me in brown leather cowgirl boots resonating on beauty
hesitating on gorgeousness
silent in the backseat of my car
in a valuable you. (Venezia Fields) Dress conservatively, and be cordial to death (Kendra Frost) And this is the girl I'm fucking now (Jenna Hoskins) No villainous vanguard can victimize this great nation, nor her emboldened people (Jeremy Johnson) to tame john (Alyssa Medeiros) One thousand mea culpas spilling unto the becoming of ashes, Joshua and the Judges (Jannell Murrell) Like wind fallen fruit we return to the earth (Connor Perry) Names read aloud to signify some sort of strange hijab, social constructing manipulations (Laura Ashley) Interpretations mind numbing and excessively statistical studies indicate the breath of illustrious universality (Jaime Tate) Some muslim machine churning in wroth aggression, thinking it over though (Amanda Vanderhorst) She says forget it. I say okay. So I waved my shredded art in solemn recognition that everything we used to know, and everything we used to love now belongs to the other side, in this post-colonial thank you And all of our children are going to die I was Africa. I was a plane flying in your bedroom some soft afternoon.
I was American poetry and plaudits aiming to shoot John in this human assessment
I was the ugly American in this Karen/Tony quarrel this placating teen breasts no villains no knaves no trains on my grandmother's graveyard
I was the fucking American and all of her ugly faces of liberty ruminating on girl culture which is wanting everyone to die and then lose some weight
I am the real American craning my neck in angelic railroads dismantling GM factories in Moraine and beach dwelling off the coast of San Francisco as I take a double shot of Kentucky made under the umbrella of cicadas in some Wisconsin summer burning holes through bleached beached cigars off the coast of the Carolinas all burning to dust every dream ever settled in New York and up through biblical names of a century ago 
(Veronica Beth) It's all part of the human assessment program. |
