Tin

I woke up that morning in a cookie tin. It was your average-sized cookie tin. By the smell, I guessed that it had contained Danish butter cookies at some point in time. Not anymore. There wasn’t anything in there except for me. Little old me.

In case the reader hasn’t already figured this out, there really is not much to do in a cookie tin. You can throw stuff at the walls and listen to the loud clang of unspecified material hitting metal and then the echo of the sound waves taking a jog around your ears. You can also pound the walls with your fist and scream, if you’re the more desperate type. Or you can just sit there, crunched up into a little human ball, and close your eyes and pretend you’re in someplace beautiful instead of this damn tin cookie container. I did all of them. First the second then the first then the third. After a while you give up hope. I wasn’t sad, though. I was just resigned.

I had nothing better to do, so I reviewed the events of the past night. It had been a Sunday night. I was walking around the streets of the city aimlessly, trying to have my eye caught by something, some store, restaurant, club, person, anything. At about eight o’clock I began to get hungry. I went into the nearest restaurant that seemed cheap and generally not unappealing. People talked all around me. I couldn’t hear one person at a time, but rather an anonymous din of yells, whispers, screams, grunts, clangs of utensils on dishes, opinions, expressions, individuality, all the same old shit you get when you go out. The public is rather dull, they seem to all just be talking about variations on the same theme. I want ¬this I hate that. I don’t want to want anything anymore. People are always talking about it, and, to be honest, I’ve really become rather tired of it.

I ordered my food from a fresh-face young boy who’s nametag said ‘Albert’ on it. He seemed college age to me. I commented that you didn’t see younger people with that name anymore generally speaking anyways and he replied that his parents were living in the past man or at least they had been when they had him. I ordered a turkey sandwich with tomatoes and other stuff on it and he brought it back in about ten minutes. Pretty fast cooks here huh I commented yeah he replied. I ate the sandwich. Tolerable, it filled me up. The tomatoes were crunchy.

After that, I left to go walk around some more. Nothing notable happened. Just the minutes backwards somersaulting by and the hours snowballing until it was midnight and I was tired so I went home. I had an place on fifty-second street. I walked into the apartment and flicked on the lights. I filled my pipe, lit it, and put on a Coltrane record. After the album was over, I read a bit and went to sleep.
I had one dream that night. They say that we have lots of dreams every night, it’s just that we don’t remember them. The ones that I can’t remember are obviously irrelevant. The one I can is rather irrelevant also. In it, I was sitting in a cave. It was underground. There was one stalagmite, standing way up tall, parsing my field of vision into two halves. One the right half, the rocks that made up the cave walls were blue. They had scratches all over them, as if a lion had been sharpening his nails on them. The other side had green rocks. They were actually black, but there was so much moss growing on them that they were green for all intents and purposes. I remember thinking that the moss was poisoning the air and that I was going to die and that then the lions were going to come home and eat my remains with chopsticks and fried green beans. A cold gust of wind blew through the cave. I thought that that meant that maybe there was a way out. The air had to come from somewhere. I searched frantically all over the walls of the cave to find an opening, but to no avail. I felt myself begin to suffocate slowly, and as my face turned blue, the whispering came out of nowhere –

I woke up then. Or maybe I just don’t remember the rest of it. It doesn’t matter anyways.

The tin can began to get colder and colder. Eventually it froze. The ice began to creep along the walls, slowly and steadily making its advance toward me. I sat there, shivering, waiting for the ice to envelop me.

In the end, it didn’t really hurt that much.

The Bar

There is a bar on West 54th street where people go to get away. There isn’t really one specific kind of person that hangs out there, but they all have one thing in common: they’ve got nowhere better to be. Some of them just found their significant cheating on them, some of them just lost their jobs, and some of them did both of those a really long time ago. They're all drunk, but not drunk enough to get rowdy. Just drunk enough to forget they exist. Nobody vomits in the bar, and there are never any fights. It’s always quiet in that bar, the silence only punctuated by the occasional mumbled call for another drink. Most of the people there lean their elbows against the bar, and prop up their heads with the arm attached to that elbow. Some of them look asleep, sitting there with their face down. But they aren’t really asleep. They just don’t want anybody to talk to them. But nobody ever comes into the bar looking for a conversation or a good time. But nobody’s there for a bad time, either. They’re all just sitting there, because they know that nobody will disturb them. They can just sit around and think about not thinking about whatever got them there. It is the most comfortable place in the world. They do what they want, which is nothing. The owner doesn't make much money, but enough to survive. The lighting is dim, and the bathroom is relatively clean. Some people smoke cigarettes. Some don’t. Nobody cares.
At around four, when the first rays of sun start shining in, people start to clear out. They leave money at the tables. They aren’t paying for the liquor. After the last customer exits, the bartender and waiter hang a big closed sign above the door. They begin to clean up. And when the bar opens at eleven, they’re ready, ready to accept the new crowd of broken souls, ready to provide a safe space for them to feel better, ready to make them feel comfortable and accepted, ready to let them know that everything would be better soon, and even if it wasn’t, they’d always have the bar to come to.

Bourgeois

The guests arrived at seven-thirty. Their cars all drew up in unison. They were all black Mercedes with high quality speaker systems on which they listened to Nina Simone. The insides were beige, leather. Their exteriors, shiny. They had been polished by the servants as they always were before their owners drove anywhere.
The men got out of the car first. They descended, stiff and proud, from the driver’s seat of their car. They all wore black tuxedos. They examined their bowties. Raised their hats to the other guests. Then they walked around the front of the car to the passenger seat. Still in unison, like they were all walking to the rhythm of some cruel, absurd waltz. They opened the passenger door of the car, gracefully drew it open. One foot, and then the other, of the lady descended. They wore tall, black high heels. Black was in fashion. The ladies, all at one time, floated out of the car and graced the asphalt with the oh-so-lovely touch of their stilettos. Once they had gotten to the other side of the car, picking up their feet ever so slightly with each step so they looked as if they slid across the ground, the full content of their outfits was displayed. They wore slim, black dresses. They went down to about their knees.
Offering their elbows to the ladies, who naturally accepted with grace and poise, the men walked towards the mansion, and the ladies inevitably followed, seeing as they were rather attached to the men. They made their not-so-long and not-so-harrowing journey through the not-so-wilderness of the street on which the mansion was situated. They were thoroughly tired at about the halfway point and therefore decided to stop for some wine and cheese, after which they continued their walk. Being elegant is tiring. As they walked, they slowly formed into a single file line, with adequate space in between each couple. The first one arrived at the door. The man rang the bell. The host opened, greeted the couple with something like, you’re right on time, or, the early bird always catches the worm as they say. After this the couple was invited in. The second couple approached the door. Waited for the first couple to get comfortable. Rang the doorbell. The host greeted them with something like, second ones here! The third couple approached. Similar procedure. And on and on until the reservoir of elegant couples was extinguished.
Each couple sat across from each other at the table. The host sat at one head, the wife at the other. It was a rather long table. An abundance of silver covered it in the form of multiple spoons, forks, and knives for each person. The tablecloth was white and frilly.
The host stood up and tapped his champagne glass lightly with his dessert fork. It made a dainty tinkling noise, not unlike the sound of a champagne glass being lightly tapped with a salad fork. “I have an announcement to make,” he said, “I would just like to thank everyone for coming and I would like to tell you all tha–“ he was cut off by the champagne glass exploding in his hand. A barrage of bullets erupted from the tommy guns held by the two gunmen who had jumped through the doorway that led from the adjacent room to the dining room. People tried to hide, but it was no use, as the gunmen had obviously had a large amount of practice and were very quick and efficient in their jobs, gunning down a room full of people in about forty-five seconds. Blood leaked onto the expensive carpet from multiple bullet wounds. Expressions of shock and horror were imprinted on the dead. Their body positions resembled more a bag of potatoes than an elegant swan. One of the woman’s heels was broken.

The two gunmen surveyed the carnage. Nobody was alive.

One gunman turned to the other and said, “Bourgeois fucks.”

The other one said, “Yeah.”

The Kill

Fattie Shaw was eating a cheap-ass meal in a cheap-ass diner and casually pretending to read the newspaper when he saw the man with the yellow hatband and green suit walk past. He walked fast, looked like he was in a hurry. Had to find someone. Meet someone. Pay someone. Kill someone? Shaw slapped more than the meal was worth on the table and walked out of the diner. It was a crowded street, but Shaw could keep an eye on the hatband man pretty was, he was maybe six foot five and stood out pretty well. He was carrying a big briefcase. Probably stuffed with money, Shaw thought. Or H. You never knew with these high rollers. Probably lived pretty damn comfy. The man walked. And walked. Turned. Shaw turned. Pretty easy job, Shaw thought. But then: don’t jinx it Fattie. You’ve seen enough murder mysteries to know that the perfect crime never goes right. The man checked his watch. Seemed relieved. Pace slowed down. He went into the nearest diner. So did Shaw. The man ordered some coffee. So did Shaw. Then Shaw went to the bathroom. Went into the stall, pulled out a revolver and silencer. Spun the silencer on quickly and expertly. Shaw had deft fingers. They almost stroked the revolver as they checked the bullets in it. The hands of an artist. Shaw liked to think of himself as an artist.

Fattie stuck the revolver into the waistband of his pants, flushed the toilet, washed his hands. He buttoned up his suit jacket so no one could see the butt of the gun sticking out. Went back into the diner. Man only half done with his coffee. Slow drinker. Shaw was a fast drinker. They evened out. Finished at the same time. Left.

The following went on for a while. Man didn't seem very conscious of his surroundings, he never noticed Shaw. He turned into an alley where Shaw presumed the man was going to drop off the briefcase. It was one of those dead-end alleys that the heroes always get trapped in in movies. They always make a miraculous escape, though. Not this time, Shaw thought to himself. Not this time.

Shaw anxiously fingered the butt of his gun, stroking it like it was his pet poodle. Shaw peeked into the alley cautiously. The man was facing the dead end. The man checked his watch. The bullet made a hissing noise. The man was dead.
Fattie took the briefcase and walked away. Better get away quick, before someone sees you.

On the subway back to the boss’ house, Fattie wondered who the man was that he had to be killed. What was in the briefcase. What was his name. Things like that. But Fattie kicked it out of his mind. Best not think about details. You’ll slip up, and then it’ll be you they’re gunning for. Twenty years and a couple of jail raps and like hell he was going to mess a job. No use in thinking about it, he thought. I kill. They pay. Done deal.

Untitled, because I'm that mysterious.

What is it about sitting in the forest at night that makes one feel like a feather falling from the highest to the lowest point, stuck in some perpetual zig-zag down the wind currents as gravity pushes one down towards the inevitable end? It is so quiet, the trees seem to look down at you, or rather where you are sitting, knowing that soon you will have to leave, but they will be there for hundreds of years, aging and aging but still remaining, while you age and die, wither away into the dust that always lies at the end of any path. The silence, it looms over you like a massive piano full of weights, pushing you down some sort of hole of terror. Yet this terror almost feels good. Maybe terror is not the right word for it, maybe it shall be referred to as awe. Yes, it is the awe that is that impending disaster that is the piano, it is awe that forces you to contemplate the futility of existence, your tiny-ness in the grand scheme of things, because there is one, random and unfair as it maybe be there is one. It is in the forest at night where one discovers such amazing things as out of body experiences and meditation. You levitate towards some higher state of being, one unoccupied by you until just now, which gives one a feeling of power, yes, power, joy, now it is you they awe! But then you drop, fast, and you plummet off of your throne. You think of something else, somebody else, what they said, or did, what they looked like, and your concentration is broken, you rub your head into confusion as you ponder the rationality of what just happened and you think it was maybe all just a dream, maybe this is all just a dream, what if we are just small particles attached to the buttocks of some dust mite that makes its home under the couch of some poor middle class family in which the father figure is named Bob, and Bob is rather allergic to dust mites, and so as the mite crawls up and up, it flits its way to the top of the couch, jumps into the air, flies over near Bob, and then: sneeze, the forceful ejection of air and snot and who knows what else is so strong that the mite is flung, flung across the room and smashes into the wall and dies, and there is the apocalypse, presented to you by the fine ladies of the 23rd Street Brothel and Playhouse. The stars peer confusedly as you peer confusedly at them, wondering how a ball of gas remains in such a shape with such volatile nuclear reactions going on inside them, why don’t they explode like a woman on her period and fling themselves like the dust mite against some cosmic wall, and the stars wonder how a collection of bones muscles and blood vessels and whatnot packaged up in a big fancy bag of skin with some hair in a few places retains its shape instead of just slumping into nonexistence and how that somehow breeds consciousness. So take off your clothes, dance nude through the forest, be free, etc. Scream like there’s no tomorrow, because there probably isn’t, and who gives a shit anyways, what is tomorrow that means so much that you always have to be worrying about it and therefore cannot enjoy it when it comes because tomorrow never comes, right when you think it is almost hear it recedes into the distant future, once again to torture you because you cannot control it, you cannot control your own fate or destiny, you are destined to be eaten up by the worms just like the rest of us, decomposing until all that is left of you is a tombstone, some bones and a few certificates certifying that you, indeed, did exist, because that really matters, it matters so much that you existed, you, a tiny dot in a tiny dot in a tiny dot in a tiny dot in a tiny dot that is the visible universe, the limit of what we can perceive, because what we can perceive becomes larger and larger every moment, but what we cannot does the same, the vast universe of mystery.

The Spear

Jean was a librarian, and a pretty decent one at that. She wore dull-colored clothing to work everyday and had glasses, the circular kind. She read avidly and always had suggestions for anybody who bothered to ask. All of her male colleagues had beards, as they were all English majors.
Bad things happen to librarians, too, oddly enough. She was walking to work one day – she lived about a block away from “the grand bastion of literature” as she called her place of employment – when a spear fell out of the sky and landed right in front of her, point down in the grass. If the spear had dropped even a second later, that grass would have been her and she would have been impaled through the head straight down. I am rather pleased that this did not happen, as it would be a rather boring story, like ones about recovering from an incident usually are (as opposed to the incident itself), and it would also be rather graphic and I would have had to waste a large amount of time, words, and finger-muscle strength to convey to the reader the disgustingness of the scene, which didn’t happen. Digressing from my digression, back to what actually happened. Jean grasped the spear’s shaft with both hands and pulled as hard as she could until she managed to release the spear from the incredibly dense soil that was present in the area. She examined it:
Looked Indian, with those little notches on the head that let you know it was handmade and not just produced in some factory. The shaft which she had been gripping very tightly beforehand was carved all over with strange markings that she supposed to be Indian. She lived in northeastern France and so it was not very uncommon to encounter Indian spears falling out of the sky and nearly missing one’s head. Exited by this discovery for no comprehensible reason, she quickly grabbed the spear – it was not very large – and ran to find the nearest taxi. She could almost hear the uptempo bebop soundtrack booming out in real life like in a New Wave film, as she ran for the taxi. It only got worse once she got into the taxi, and the driver began to drive at about fifteen miles an hour, and although we are in France, I’m no big fan of calculations. Naturally, she assumed that she must be going crazy, and therefore ate some of her crazy pills that she had always kept on her person, because one never knows when the situation one is in requires the eating of crazy pills. Unfortunately, somebody had switched the pills with a rather strong hallucinogenic substance, therefore making her actually crazy where she had been simply over-imaginative before.
Naturally, taxis and hallucinogens do not mix very well. She jumped out of the car with a scream as soon as she saw her first squid and began pounding on the black asphalt in a somewhat LUGUBRIOUS and IRRELEVANT sorrow when compared to her situation. As she beat on the ground, holes began to form, big black holes. Supposing they were wormholes when they were actually sinkholes, she jumped in with a scream of joy that was exactly the opposite of lugubrious and promptly sank to her death in the mud, as the asphalt was not asphalt but actually mud, she was a very good jumper and had cleared the street and the sidewalk and landed in the mud by the road – it had just rained and the soil was getting very soggy.
The spear, however, survived, and lived happily ever after.

Walk

I was taking a walk. They say the first step is the hardest and that’s generally true. You have to stand up, groan, lace up and tie your shoes, and even then you’re only physically prepared. But not mentally; that takes more effort, something which is very difficult to gain. Effort is like a precious commodity that nobody wants, it’s like seeing a golden necklace embedded with fine pearls thrown into some dumpster in the slums and left there to be picked up by the trash people when they came every week and live out its necklace-life rotting in some shit-ass landfill.
Anyhow, I had none of these problems. I was so used to it that it really did not take too much effort at all, the amount comparable to maybe standing up and walking yourself to the door. The door in question in this particular situation that I was in was tall and white and made of wood. About eight feet tall, maybe 5 feet wide. It was a pretty average sized door, but nobody was really caring. The white paint wasn’t chipped or faded, but you somehow knew, just by looking at it, that it wasn’t new and had in fact been there for quite some time. The peep-hole was small and inconsequential to the story, even more than the dimensions of the door, as the peep-hole was not and will not be used. The door, however, will. But let us now turn our attention to the handle. It was made of iron with a sort of greenish tint, and very curvy. It was one of those handles that one has to push down on rather hard and then push forward to open the door. I did what I just described and passed through the threshold and into the outside world.
It was a little bit chilly out, with gray and cloudy skies, which always seem to both lift and drag down my spirits and the same time. It was a day where there was about a seventy percent chance that it would rain. I left it up to chance but brought a hooded sweater just in case things got wet. A bird let out a screech as it ran rather comically into a birch tree, dropping its dinner out of its beak in the process. It was odd, really, I felt sorry for the bird, the way it looked at the worm crawling away, it was probably going to go hungry. Yet, I felt glad for the worm, narrowly escaping the jaws of its predators and crawling heroically away. The worm, I thought, was Superworm. Then the bird at the worm. So much for superpowers.
I walked farther away from my house, into a trail into the woods. The woods were comprised mostly of birch trees, and the animal life was mainly ravens and spiders. The webs, they crisscrossed all over the top of the forest, in between the tops of the trees like some demonic cross word puzzle that there is no answer to except fear, the strongest emotion. Fear propels like no propellant, propelling into love, hatred, war, peace, anger, tension, betrayal, sabotage, and a number of other pleasant and unpleasant things. If money was power, then fear was richer than Rockefeller.
Continuing my walk, I fell into the sort of daydream one normally gets while one is walking through the woods. The daydreams of the epitomes of all your hopes and dreams, and idyllic version of your future life, every failure in your life rectified and gone, no worries, just happiness. This warm glow would be in your chest all the time, everywhere you went, everything you did would be just perfect and if it wasn’t you would make it that way because you were perfect and your life was perfect and everything was just so great. Don’t you wish, sometimes, maybe those daydreams would come true? Well, I guess that’s the point of daydreams, wishful thinking. What you wish your life was, what it isn’t. I sighed and decided there was nothing I could do but keep walking down the forest path.

Contemplative Poetry...

I
always wondered...

can
you
clean up
a
mess

or
just
hide
it
?



Yes, very over-intellectual.

Poems

everything

sound it out
ev-er-ey-thing
four syllables
there are four elements too
but those are obsolete
and nobody cares
not one bit
----------------------------
depend

everything
depends
on everything

it takes two to tango
if you had three people
it would be a threego
or some crap like that
----------------------------
steroids

you ever see
a hulky guy
lumbering his way
down the cracked concrete
path

on the streets
he pushes
some innocent passerby
why is he angry

four fused rings
is the chemical structure
generally speaking
of a steroid
-----------------------------
it does that to you

hate pushes
a blunt knife
at the surface of the drum

pop

too late
to save you now

Awake, But Still Screaming

I woke up, choked back a scream, a yell, some kind of exclamation of surprise, the kind you get when you just woke up from a dream that made you feel like everybody was trying to kill you and that they were damn good at it. Which was what I had just done, woken up from a bad dream, a bad, bad dream. I’d always been paranoid, but this was just too much, you know, when you can feel the pointy silver tips of the knives poking but not penetrating your skin, just waiting for the chance, for you to let down your guard, so that they can pounce, you know, just jump on you and stab and stab ‘til you’re just a mess, a bloody mess sprawled out on the floor waiting for some poor janitor to come around a say to himself, ay, dío, que lástima. Then he calls the cops and the ambulance, but, you know, they’re out to get you, too, so all you can do is lie there in pain and wait for the pigs to come and finish the job with semi-automatics or something like that. Anyways, that’s the kind of dream I woke up from, it was pretty scary, usually I’m just being chased by aliens. But these were humanoid and most definitely earthlings and most definitely out to get me. Get me good, you know, all out to get me and get me good.

It was pitch black like the souls of the people, 2 o’clock in the morning. I had work tomorrow so I decided that I’d better go to bed, you know, I didn’t want to come to work all tired, rubbing my eyes, my tie out of place, and my shirt not fully tucked in, with people giving me those looks out of the side of their eyes, criticizing me with their peripheral vision and in the whispered conversations they had while I was walking past. I lumbered downstairs like a five hundred pound drunk guy with balance issues in his cerebellum, I almost tripped somewhere around three times. I was going downstairs to get something I knew would help me go back to sleep, you know how it is, warm milk and cookies soothe you like nothing else. I walked into the kitchen and flicked on the light, and he was standing there. I shook my head, he can’t be back, he’s dead. I looked down at the floor and then nervously and slowly bent my neck back to a normal position, he wasn’t there anymore. Memories following me around like a sick puppy begging for food. I gave my milk and cookies to the puppy and went to bed.

The Plateau

The black sky closed oppressively in on the landscape, drowning the last cries of happiness in nature. I woke up on a plateau in Tibet. Some snow mountains and that kinda shit. A memoir of some obscure Hungarian hung on one of the branches of the tree on which I leaned my head so I could look up and examine the sea of blackness that hung damningly over my head. Clunk - the book fell off of the tree and hit me on my knee. I cursed loudly and then threw it at some nearby rock. I found two rocks to use as flints and hit them together to light a fire by holding it over a pile of dried brush that I had probably collected very recently. Once the fire was started and I was reasonably warm, I got to carving. Carved stuff, all over everywhere. Like a jack rabbit with a pocket knife, a line here, a line there, some squiggly crap over here 'Twas like a work of art that nobody would ever see because nobody came up here on this godforsaken plateau.

I was resting and sitting around when I felt something wet on my bare feet. Something started to smell bad, real bad. I looked up and there was something that looked like a winged alpaca. It seemed to think my dirty exposed big toe was a salt lick or something: it was licking it so fast and diligently that I thought that my foot would disintegrate from all of the saliva piled up on it.

BOOM. It exploded and my big toe was safe. Headline: RANDOM EXPLOSION SAVES BIG TOE FROM CERTAIN DISINTEGRATION BY THE HAND OF THE TONGUE OF A WINGED ALPACA.

I tripped and broke my knee. Damned Hungarian memoirs.
----------------------------------------------
EPILOGUE:

The rain came down hard and fast and washed away everything, and art was over. Into the puddles on the ground it went, despite all efforts for something to happen otherwise, to contradict the cruel reality that was the certain destruction and fading of art from the rock walls on the plateau in Tibet.

Verse

Some people say
that verse should rhyme
have rhythm
iambic pentameter
and that kind of stuff

What does it all mean?
the lines-
breaks;
semicolons,
commas.
periods

It means
that there are three kinds of poets:
verse poets,
free verse poets,
and free poets.

Midnight

Midnight-
a black canopy covers
the empty sky.
somewhere in the distance
music wafts to your ears
background music,
quiet sound.

Midnight-
scream, scream like hell
the sky will not judge
your secrets:
swallowed whole.

Midnight-
no one to hear you
but the vast expanses
of endless sky.

Midnight-
comforting loneliness,
a safety blanket
made of nothing
but the black canopy
that covers
the vast expanses
of endless sky.

Untitled

Simon was walking through the dusty old house when he ran into the bookcase. A large, heavy hardcover book proceeded to fall on his toe, after which Simon gave a little cry of pain. Curious to see what this was, he picked it up. A fancy binding, but no name on it. He opened it. The first sentence went like this: “It was a May morning, and the dewdrops were glistening on the Eiffel tower as small frogs croaked from a nearby pond.” Intrigued as to why there would be dewdrops on the Eiffel Tower, Simon read on. “Thomas was very displeased, as he did not like frogs the least bit, let alone dewdrops. In summary, he was a rather moody fellow with not much appreciation for nature. He was humming the introduction to Stravinsky’s Rites of Spring when he saw her. She was the one who had tormented him, the reason he went out for a walk every morning. He accelerated his pace, and purposefully ran straight into her. She yelped, and when she realized it was him she stopped. An odd look crossed her face, a sort of ashamedness. She knew what she had done to him, and nothing could change that. The past is known, a memory, but the future is scary, and rather unpredictable at that. He asked her if she would mind walking with him, out of common courtesy of course. He didn’t really want to, but he had to keep his reputation up lest he fancy attending dinner parties.” This was as far as Simon got. He was not a very attentive person, and soon dropped the book on the floor and wandered around the house some more.

He entered a new room. Like the rest of the house, it was rather dusty. Simon was given to sneezing, and so a terrible cascade of achoo!s followed his heavy footsteps on the damp, creaky wooden floor. Presently, he found something that would keep his interest for say, 5 minutes. It was a large harpsichord, resting on the wall. He picked it up. He didn’t actually know how to play the harpsichord, but fancied giving it a shot. He thought, if I play bad enough, people will like me. He picked it up, played a note. The instrument was damp. He wondered how the house had become so damp. He played some more notes. Instead of the cacophony he had expected on the occasion of picking up the instrument, a beautiful melody flew out of the harp. The Ds and Gs and As and Bs and Cs and whatever other unnamed sounds he was creating seemed to lull him into a trance, a beautiful, dreamy trance in which all was nice and nothing could go wrong. He swung in time to the music, not knowing what he was playing, but at the same time playing it as would a musician who had practice for years, honing his skill at the instrument. However, he soon began to hear loud pops, but continued playing, committed to this dream. He opened his eyes and looked at the harp. All the strings had gone by now, flying off in various directions as if guided by some unknown hand that was maleficent to the instrument but not the instrumentalist. None of the strings had come near to hurting Simon, but the harp was completely destroyed, with no hope of repair. Besides, Simon, having awoken, had lost the artistic instinct gained in that mysterious trance, and felt no desire to play music anymore. He had a way of being dissatisfied with everything he encountered.

Simon creaked his way up to the next floor of the house. There was a hallway, leading into 5 rooms, 2 on the right and 3 on the left. He walked into the first. It was empty, except for a large, dark painting on the wall. On closer examination this proved to be a very realistic depiction of a vampire bat. Drawn by some terrible hypnosis emanating forth from the creatures eyes, he slowly reached up to the painting, touched it. A small shudder ran through his body, a chill racking his spine. He was suddenly plunged into a vision: He was flying over southern Mexico. He saw people, carrying harvest, driving livestock. It was then he saw his shadow, and realized that he was a bat. He screamed, a piercing shriek that could have destroyed the eardrums and possibly the sleep of those with less physical and emotional fortitude. His wings were failing, he flapped and flapped and flapped but he was descending too fast, his head inexplicably pointing straight down, he managed to right himself but still fell down at an alarming rate, until, splat. He lay there dead, wallowing in broken bones and blood when he realized with a jolt that he was back in the empty room, touching the bat portrait. He blinked, shuddered. He left the room quickly, vowed to never go in there again.

He skipped the next three rooms, his hand hovering over the doorknobs for uncountable minutes, sometimes touching, but never turning them. Finally, at the fifth room, he decided to go in, his courage having returned to him in a flash of confidence. He opened the door and tentatively looked inside. There was nothing in the room, in literal terms, the room was a void, a small contained black hole. Even Simon, not the honor roll student in his school days, could realize that that black hole, that nothingness would swallow up anyone who went into it, any matter entering it would be crushed and destroyed, a martyr of curiosity. He could not rip his eyes away from the void. Nothing is a rather spectacular sight, it is almost impossible to find it anywhere excepting the place of the heart in a politician. He thought, I am the void. He thought like a robot, repeating this phrase in his mind. He was a broken record, but one that was not so great in the first place, and was being repeated at the worst part. He felt drawn to the void, things in this house seemed to have a magnetic quality to them. He walked towards it, stepped over the threshold with one foot. The other began to follow the next when it hit the frame of the door, causing Simon to awaken from his robotic state. He pulled his foot out of the room with much effort, then slammed the door. Another dangerous room, in a dangerous house. He knew this floor was not something to be reckoned with, it had a powerful, evil quality about it, and should have been left alone, kept in isolation where it could hurt only itself. Tired, Simon sat down on the floor to catch his breath. Fighting against the very essence of nothingness is a fearsome struggle, and is apt to make one feel like one has been punched in the stomach, short of breath.


Simon stood up and walked around the house.

The Missionary

Sometime in the late 1600s (the exact year is not certain), a Spaniard by the name of José Sanchez Martinez Guadalupe México Éstrada Velázquez left an anonymous port city in Spain, and floated over to New Spain, somewhere in the general vicinity of Venezuela. For continence’s sake, his name is José, because it’s rather an ordeal to type his whole name. José was a missionary. He had been accused by several people of being a Jew, and so took a job as a missionary to the new world in order to bring the light of Christ to the Indians, and also prove he was not a Jew. Coincidentally, most of his accusers actually were Jews, trying to get those damn Catholics off their back by accusing someone else. Not a totally unreasonable (or original) idea. Now back to Venezuela. José was actually having a rather good time there, raping, pillaging, and generally bringing the loving grace of Jesus to the savages. The only reason he hadn’t been skinned alive so far was the large company of rather burly, fearsome conquistadors who seemed to follow him everywhere. They even slept in his tent and watched him go to the bathroom. These guys were watching out for any funny stuff. José didn’t exactly understand what funny stuff was, as he was a rather boring character and without a sense of humour.

The first time the conquistadors left, some funny stuff happened. José was sitting in his tent, thinking of the Virgin Mary and touching himself, when he heard a large amount of clamour from outside. He cussed, crossed himself, then looked out of his tent. A large crowd of Indians was throwing a large picture of Jesus donated by the church into the fire. One might expect a missionary to have a natural impulse to stop such a sacrilegious act, but José was no normal missionary. Instead of taking action, he crawled back into his tent and shivered. He was more scared of the Indians then he was of God.

After a short period of time, the Indians realized that the conquistadors had left their padre in the camp. They then proceeded to knock him out, tie him up, and drag him to their village. These Indians, rather than being enlightened as to the idea of Jesus being our saviour, were rather miffed at the Spaniards, and rightly so. What with the encomienda and the diseases, they had lost half of their tribe already. So, in an act of revenge, they bopped José rather hard on the head with a large stick. They did this right after he had woken up from being knocked out, and so his only memory was of a dark-skinned man swiftly bringing a large stick towards his head. However, this was soon forgotten, along with pretty much everything else he knew, which, in all honesty, was not a lot. Anyhow, he had no idea that he was Spanish, or that he was a missionary, or even that he was José Sanchez Martinez Guadalupe México Éstrada Velázquez. He had suffered a terrible concussion as a result of prior bop to the head, and this had resulted in a powerful amnesia. José, still being rather stupid, and even more so now, however, assumed he was one of the Indians. Remarkably, he could still speak Spanish rather fluently, and conjugate all of his verbs correctly, even the irregulars. The Indians knew Spanish also, and, realizing that this man could be useful, adopted him in. Later on, they would manage to kill the conquistadors, a Herculean feat by all standards, but that is irrelevant to the story.

The Indians taught José their customs and language, and like most stupid people, José was an extremely good follower, and caught on very fast. They even gave him a new name, Saquilla, which meant, roughly, “dirty foreigner asshole”. The Indians told him that it meant, “honored one”. They were good liars, and great salesmen. They sold Saquilla the idea of driving those bastard Spanish out of their homeland. In time, Saquilla became the greatest revolutionary Indian leader, mostly functioning off his one talent, the ability to stare at something for an extremely long time. All important historians agree that this is the truth. All the rest of them thought it was hilarious, and were therefore deemed unimportant.

After a defeat by the new conquistadors shipped in from Spain, Saquilla and his men had taken to hiding in the jungle, a hard task, seeing as the jungle was rather small. He invented the ingenious style of guerilla warfare, destroying the Spaniards. But they just kept on coming. It seemed Spain was fighting a war of attrition. Eventually, Saquilla’s army consisted of Saquilla, and thirteen Indians in loincloths, with small clubs.

Saquilla was captured and sent to Spain, were he was hanged for being a Jew.

The Fugitive

John sat huddled up in an abandoned cellar near some cornfield in the Midwest. He was a nervous man, a man with nothing to do but run. The government was after him, and the police, and the FBI, and the CIA, and NASA, and a mess of other important organizations of important people doing important things. As everybody else seemed to realize, however, none of this was actually happening. Sure, he was in a cellar in the Midwest. Sure he THOUGHT they were after him. Maybe they were. But to the average person on the street, nobody was chasing John. To the average person on the street, John’s entire existence was unknown and, truly, unneeded.

He had had a family before he ran off. They cried when he left. But he didn’t have time for that emotion, nor any. He was most concerned with the preservation of himself. Getting out of the city had been hard. He was not a particularly suspicious-looking man. But when he was walking, he would see a policeman. This was inevitable. He would become nervous. What if they recognized him? He must be all over their files right now. An aura of deathly fear would course through his body. Even if the police officer didn’t acknowledge his presence, he would feel as if the officer was watching him. Watching, waiting for the perfect time to attack. They couldn’t do it in public. No, what he had done was too grave, too serious, too perverse even, to reveal to the general public. They had ways of concealing it. They could always figure out a way, brand him as a madman, take him to an “asylum”, more like a torture chamber.

John shivered. He moved the logs in the little ring of stones that constituted the fire pit that he used to warm himself. He had no regrets for what he had done. It was totally and completely reasonable. So how had they found out? He thought, maybe it was one of my friends. They were always jealous of him, he knew he had had a better life, and they knew it too. A wife, two kids, a middle-sized paycheck, and an ample supply of polo shirts, and beer. Anything anybody with a sense of reason could ever want. A wife for fun, kids for something to do, paycheck to live on, shirts to look decent, and beer to drink. Yes, it was his friends that had turned him in. Those damn jealous assholes, what did they know about loyalty, honesty, trust, even. Friends. Bah. They didn't deserve that title. Just fry them until they’re at their end. Maybe then they’ll be nicer to him.

His train of thought soon ran to his current hiding place. The Midwest, something about it just didn’t appeal to him. Maybe he was just too much of a city slicker. Suddenly he heard a twig snap outside. He waited in deep fear. When nothing happened, he lifted up the trapdoor that led into the cellar and discovered a small bird hopping around in the pile of sticks he had collected to use as food. He looked up at the sky. So this is what he was missing. Didn't look like anything special. The sky was grey. It seemed to be getting worse. The wind picked up. He saw a funnel cloud forming. Then John did the impossible. He predicted the future. He saw his imminent doom at the hands of the tornado. It had obviously been created by NASA. He climbed up to the top of the house that covered the cellar. He sat down. As the tornado neared, until he could almost taste the destruction, he sat peacefully. He died thinking, what effect will this have on anybody? A fitting last thought.

5 days later, some farmers were in the process of eating breakfast when they heard a loud noise on their roof. They went to investigate. The found a skeleton. One said to another: “What should we do with it?” The other said: “We’ll have to bury it. I wonder who the poor bastard was.” They picked it up to move it off their roof. When they tried to pick up the skeleton, it crumbled into dust, as if it were allergic to humanity. The particles floated away calmly into the gray sky. The farmers gazed incredulously at the last bits of the skeleton as they slowly slipped into the cracked between their calloused fingers, then finished their breakfast and went to work.

And the wind blew on.

The Famine

Bernard Whiffletree stood at a street corner, contemplating the demise of his city. It had come fast, and gone just as quickly. One day, the supplies had been cut off. Early morning shoppers walked into the groceries to buy their various goods, and were surprised to find the shelves empty. It was as if food had never existed. The gates to the city had been closed, and there were very high walls. Never mind the time or place, they are not important. By the time the month was over everyone was dead. Why? For the greater good. Bernard survived by being intelligent. There were few left. They sat on the curb, munching on the bones of their relatives. It was the only thing to do. What else could you do? Stare at that meat, and go hungry? That would be torture. There was already enough torture.

In the first days of the famine, there was general panic and confusion. Riots broke out every night, and there was not a night when the streets were not lit up by the torches and flames of revolution. They screamed for freedom, they screamed for food. But it was all in vain. How can you counter something which does not exist? People have a hard time accepting the truth. Give them a lie and they will justify it. Give them a truth and they will prove it wrong. The answer to the problem? Stop giving them anything. Why create more trouble? Maybe that was the reason, maybe they closed up this town to get rid of the halves and the halve-nots, half person half ideal. But you couldn’t do that, there were too many. The human race regenerates at an astonishing rate, with hundreds of new ones each day. Who exactly were they, though? They did everything, knew everything. They were everything. You can’t escape them, they’re always there.

Maybe it was all our fault and we brought it on ourselves. Maybe this was all one big metaphor, showing on a small scale the steep slope humanity was rolling down. The velocity increases with time. After most everybody had died, they opened the gates. Black helicopters flew in from the cloudy sky and dropped aid packages. When we opened them, we found a pistol, a loaf of bread, and some ammunition. It looked like it was every man for himself. When people tried to leave the town, automatic machine guns killed them on the spot. They were hidden cleverly. The smart ones stayed behind, rationed their bread and ammunition, and cleaned their guns regularly. Bernard was smart. That was why he was alive. There was little else alive, no birds, no rats running through the sewers. The flowers were never in bloom, a perpetual gloom had settled over the doomed city.

It seemed as if they intended to keep them there until no one was left. Bernard thought, I’ll survive, I’ll do it, even if I have to eat granite and paper to survive, I’ll live to see the outside world again. They heard his silent vow. The next morning he woke up from unpleasant dreams to find he was in a vacuum. It took him minutes of staring to realize there was nothing left. After some speculation, Bernard decided that he indeed was in a vacuum, gasped for air, and fell down on his bed, dead as a doornail.

Some Poems:

Poetry isn't really my forte, but I still do it once in a while.

The Drunk

Look-
there he goes
stumbling out
of his trailer
full of
speed,
booze,
trash,
greasy McDonald's hamburger wrappers,
vomiting
on his
american flag t-shirt.

Tryouts

I went to the soccer field
and unfolded my lawn chair
to watch the tryouts
for the team.

And after the tryouts
I watched a little boy
cry
because
he didn't make it.

Pencil Sharpener

My pencil sharpener
is clogged
full of
shavings
of old pencils
My pencil is blunt
how can I write
when the pencil sharpener
is broken?

Stain

It was a hot day
and I was having a drink
then I stumbled:
dropped the cup,
and spilled the drink
all over the new carpet
I scrubbed
and scrubbed
but it wouldn't come out
some things
are forever.

Apple

I was told that eating fruits is good for you,
so I ate an apple
when I finished
I forgot to throw it away
and it sat there
on my kitchen counter
and rotted.

Wet Cigarette

a long line of people
stand outside of a Theatre
in New York
chatting
laughing
and they enjoy themselves

and it starts
to rain
and while the rain falls
emotion does the same
and the chatting stops
and the laughing stops
and they feel
limp and useless
just like
a wet cigarette.

And I sit in my house

and have a smoke.

Restarting this blog.

So... I made this a while ago and forgot about it. So now it pleases me to restart it. Mostly because I have nothing better to do.

Please notify me and ask for permission and such if you want to use my writing for anything, It would be very nice of you and then I wouldn't have to punch you in the face.