Look at that. The brontosaurus is so unreal that even the encoded picture won't show up.

Advisable visual pollution.

I'm sensing a theme, but I can't figure it out

Haha. It's killer whales. Can you find the hidden one in every picture?

Dang it, T! You told me to look for penguins!

Fall in Michigan
is weird.

Like Sean Penn talking about
some Bukowski poem
wherein a man and a child look
out at the Pacific ocean
and the kid says, "It isn't beautiful."

And the guy didn't realize before that moment
that he didn't think it was beautiful either.
Conditioning.
The kind you put in your hair.
The kind of conditioning you're allowed to drink.
The kind of conditioning that you save
your dollars for to have the best air to wallow in.

Going through Chris Nolan movies.
Ever notice all these great directors
have some black and white flick in there
somewhere?
For Scorcese it was Raging Bull.
Aronofsky started his feature-length career with Pi.
Nolan has Following.

The piece seems promising.

This is all my departure from
trying to be original. Originality exudes
the fragrance of sweat dripping off
a pretty young woman's hair.
Delusion tastes like baked pine needles
that got buried under permafrosted, reheated, then served

on the dollar menu special items special forces
list of exciting offers.

Sometimes I just make up words.
I've decided they qualify for life - they
have the right to exist. At least for me, they do.
They can.
If they (I) so choose.

Tired tired tired endless malaise. What an ugly word -
malaise.
It reminds me of mayonnaise,
which reminds me of a whale's afterbirth.

Water bores me.
It's an exciting age to be unaware for
when the life force of the world, of everything on it,
can be unexciting
in the most unsplendid way.

Unsplendid? Insplendid? Neither. ****.
I thought one of those would have been a word.
Who was that one author who used
to write out The Great Gatsby... you know, not the guy
that wrote it - that was F. Scott Fitzgerald - but the guy
that just typed it... to get a feel for
how Fitz must have felt, must have vibed
when the words were pouring out of him.
That was his writing warm up. Makes sense.

But the first, rough copy is so rarely the final release.
Who knows what kind of rhythm got artificially inserted
like some diseased prick from an infected needle.
See? A "grab-bag of clever wordplay".
Lerner would be upset. Think he's dead anyway.
Most of the good poets are.
The rest learned how to play guitar or piano.

Falling asleep to Tom Waits.
What a cool name.
His name is a complete sentence. That's brilliant.
It's hard to make that stuff up.

Yeah.
Still not inspired.

Sociological studies used to interest
me a lot even though I know they're mostly
bullasterisk.
Asterisks are a funny thing. Why not tildes?

~~~~ me. it looks sorta weird.

Wait - so "sorta" is a word recognized by the ever omnipotent
Firefox dictionary but "unsplendid" has no say?
Unsplendid remains voiceless like the box
of Arm and Hammer in the fridge. It's just there.
All boxy and feeling inappropriate.
I bet when you close the door and the lights go off
the Arm and Hammer doesn't feel so strong,
doesn't at all fit its logo.
In that dark, frigid, fridge of a space, it's in prison.
Its logo its prison tattoo - it wears it, even in
the dark in hopes that the produce don't
talk too much ~~~~ **** to it.

Still nothing.

This has become the depository of all things inconsumable. Inconsumable is in the ~~~~ing dictionary, so I don't even care at this point. Eels is really good. He's playing here in Michigan on the 30'th but I don't think that I'm going to end up at the show. Maybe, though. People are surprised at how cheap a lot of these shows are. I'm pretty sure the most expensive tickets I ever payed for were for NIN, and they were about 65 dollars, I think. It's been a long time since I've been to a concert. Probably about three years. That wasn't a grammatically correct sentence.

Long after you've exploded into confetti made out of shredded up love letters that the cute girl from third period used to write to you, your posts on the internet will still be available until sites dump their vast collection of indifferently viewed material. What a terrible reminder of the impermanence of the pulse as compared to the pulse of the world as compared to all things being essentially the same. Tao. But you can't write of the Tao. At least that's what's been written regarding it in the Tao Teh Ching. I have a copy. Got through the whole thing. All 91 of them. They're less than a quarter of a page a piece.

Quite a fine read if you ever have the time. It's as close as some will ever get to meditation. But meditation is contemplation, and contemplation is only existent in its purest form and any dilution alters the very essence of the act. And why is this so? Because I say so. Like in that French children's book that I read not too long ago that was talking about how a sheep is a sheep because I say it's a sheep.

Good book.

The Little Prince.

It's about a guy that crashes his plane in the desert and talks to a little prince who happens to be there. The little prince came from a star in the sky.

In 1944 the guy who wrote the book died in a plane crash. Isn't that about a ~~~~~? Then again, the book was quite depressing and if you read it you might imagine, as I do, that he probably would have wanted to go out in a manner similar to that.

Assuming that the book wasn't profitable at the time. Otherwise, he may have wanted a few years to live off the cash - you know - have himself a real good time on the dollars and then end it in style. How much more stylish do you get than a plane crash? Especially if you're the only person in the plane. That's YOUR plane crash and nobody else's.

Christ, they really should have taught me better grammar. Or maybe I should have told them I needed glasses earlier or not smoked so much and learned it for myself.

"Alex: I kinda gotta ask you a question first, though. What's it like to be a character in a dream? 'Cause, I'm not awake right now. And I haven't even worn a watch since, like, fourth grade. I think this is the same watch too. Uh... yeah, I don't even know if you're able to answer that question but I'm just trying to get, like, a sense of where I am and what's going on.

Redhead: So what about you? What's your name? What's your address? What are you doing?


Alex: I... I... I can't really remember right now. I can't really recall that. But that's besides the point - whether or not I can dredge up this information about my address, or my mom's maiden name, or what not. I've got the benefit in this reality, if you want to call it that, of a consistent perspective?

Redhead: What is your consistent perspective?

Alex: It's mostly just me dealing with a lot of people... who are exposing me to information and ideas that... seem vaguely familiar, but at the same time it's all very alien to me. I'm not in an objective, rational world. Like, I've been, like, flying around. It's weird too because it's not like it's this fixed state - it's the whole spectrum of awareness. Like, uh, the lucidity wavers. Like, right now I know that I'm dreaming and we're even, like, talking about it. This is the most in myself and in my thoughts, that I've been so far. I'm talking about being in a dream. But I'm beginning to think it's something that I really don't have any precedent for. It's totally unique. The quality of the environment and the information that I'm receiving. Like your soap opera for example - that's a really cool idea. I didn't come up with that. It's like something outside of myself, like something transmitted to me externally. I don't know what this is.

Redhead: We seem to think we're so limited by the world and the confines but we're really just creating them. I mean, you keep trying to figure it out but now that you know that what you're doing is dreaming you can do whatever you want to. You're dreaming but you're awake. You have so many options. And that's what life is about.

Alex: I understand what you're saying. It's up to me. I'm the dreamer. it's weird, like so much of the information that these people have been imparting to me - I don't know, it's got, like, this heavy sort of connotation to it.

Redhead: Well, how do you feel?

Alex: Well, sometimes I feel kinda isolated, but most of the time I feel really connected - really, like, engaged in this active process. Which is weird, because most of the time I've just been really passive and not responding. I'm just kinda letting the information wash over me.

Redhead: It's not necessarily passive to not respond verbally. We're communicating on so many levels simultaneously. Perhaps you're perceiving directly.

Alex: Most of the people that I've been encountering and most of the things I want to say, it's like they kinda say it for me, and almost, like, at my cue. It's, like, complete unto itself. It's not like I'm having a bad dream - it's a great dream. But it's so unlike any other dream I've ever had before. It's like THE dream. It's like I'm being prepared for something."

Life's a ***** when you're not JUST trying to get laid.

"

Ah, broken is the golden bowl! the spirit flown forever!
Let the bell toll! -a saintly soul floats on the Stygian river -
And, Guy De Vere, hast thou no tear? -weep now or never more!
See! on yon drear and rigid bier low lies thy love, Lenore!
Come! let the burial rite be read -the funeral song be sung! -
An anthem for the queenliest dead that ever died so young -
A dirge for her, the doubly dead in that she died so young.

"Wretches! ye loved her for her wealth and hated her for her pride,
And when she fell in feeble health, ye blessed her -that she died!
How shall the ritual, then, be read? -the requiem how be sung
By you -by yours, the evil eye, -by yours, the slanderous tongue
That did to death the innocence that died, and died so young?"

Peccavimus; but rave not thus! and let a Sabbath song
Go up to God so solemnly the dead may feel no wrong!
The sweet Lenore hath "gone before," with Hope, that flew beside,
Leaving thee wild for the dear child that should have been thy bride -
For her, the fair and debonnaire, that now so lowly lies,
The life upon her yellow hair but not within her eyes -
The life still there, upon her hair -the death upon her eyes.

Avaunt! tonight my heart is light. No dirge will I upraise,
But waft the angel on her flight with a paean of old days!
Let no bell toll! -lest her sweet soul, amid its hallowed mirth,
Should catch the note, as it doth float up from the damned Earth.
To friends above, from fiends below, the indignant ghost is riven -
From Hell unto a high estate far up within the Heaven -
From grief and groan to a golden throne beside the King of Heaven."

"

- Poe

Embitterment is equal
to prolonged exposure.
I promised
I would stop writing poetry.

Well, what's poetry?

Poetry is the sound a bat makes
when it cracks the ribs
of every nice guy on the internet
so good thieves like me can flourish.

Poetry is the sound of tears
evaporating on the overheated exhaust
of a 1987 Ford Escort station wagon
before it drives away, all
your essential books for community college
in its back.

Poetry is redheads dancing naked
on the empty stage while you throw them

poetry

instead of dollar bills.

The ache of forgetting Poetry
is poetry
and it is beautiful
and sincere
and fills your car with a blonde
and a switchblade
and a glass full of beer
that runs out in under a minute if
you can hold your drink.

Poetry is an only child.
Poetry loves the word "poetry"
and wants to hear it written
seventeen thousand times - but
not exactly - because poetry
can't be unique if it is only
personally unique. It must be professionally unique.

The brilliance of your words
should shut up suns.
The intelligence of your verbal weaving
should send girls clothes
flying off at unrecorded speeds.

It should be as brief as possible without trying to over-examine the obvious in a few simple phrases. It should fit within a structure without breaking, unless necessary.

Poetry is disgusting.
And unnecessary.
Poetry took my lunch money
several years ago,
and I hit a hell of a lot harder now.

43 rolls into 44 rolls into





secession, but not succession, necessarily.

Had to go and get all poetic on us.

God's trying to kill me. I'm ~~~~ing sick of being clever.