american flag

It's weird to feel things slip away. Tonight I listened to a playlist I made in 2010. Me and Jaclyn used to have sex to it, I would put it on when I had nothing else to play, kind of my go to playlist. I'm starting to understand how other people listen to music. They don't really care that much because they don't really like music that much. They like it a little. So they'll put on something to please their freinds, something that makes them look cool, a little, I guess. I need to get away from people. I don't know what I need. I need to be more honest. An honest expression of everything. The songs on the playlist were so blue, so subdued. But I love every one. Everyone had a greater meaning outside of the context of the blue playlist. Labled "Will Never Die". Meant to be played in shuffle. Every song had meaning that was in the context of the album it came with. Not every song was necessarily blue. But in the context of the playlist it was. I did make that playlist to please jaclyn actually, to please someone else. I threw together songs I liked that I thought she would. I had such a small grasp on what she liked back then. The later playlist I made for her is on there too, burt to a cd, the last of such I've made. It was more real, more of what I liked that she would. More of what had real meaning. Maybe the best burnt cd I ever made, made for her after we broke up. Made wishing we hadn't. God, it's capitalized. I never capitalize anything. Named "Jaclyn". I've become disconected from everything. I don't love music anymore. I don't love anything anymore. I need to stay up all night. Or something. Something I used to do. I've always said once you see the end it's all over. I see the end. So maybe this is already it. Maybe the music has left me. Maybe all I'm left with already is nostolgia and the songs of my past. Four tet's this unfolds. I'm so sad. I want to conect with something that makes me feel again. I'm not feeling. I'm repressed. I'm not doing well, and no one seems to know it. No one seems to want to help me, because what I need is too much. That's the fucked up thing about depressing movies. You hear them and think how depressing they are and how it hurts everything, but perhaps seeing the truth will lead to an answer. A way to be undepressed. The nihilist movies. But nihilism is infinite. Depression is infinite. This is no answer. There will be no answer. So you'll just have to watch more and more depressing movies. Stacked on top of each other. For the rest of your life. The depression is not going to go away. Because the world is not going to go away. Everything will continue to be crap forever. There is no dealing with that. Learning how to deal with that is learning how to die. Learning how to deal with that is more crappy than everything crappy about the world. I have no realease. I miss her because at least she wanted to listen to me talk, at least she wanted to hear about my depression. At least she made me feel ok about it. Noone else does. Not only am I suffering, but to them I'm a leach. My depression is selfish and bullshit. So I have to be misserable and walk around with the knoledge that me being miserable is inherently horrible of me. slightly evil. I don't know what to do anymore. I haven't cried in years. I don't know what to do. I want to be in love. I want everything good so I can feel everything bad. i can't live this nothing. i can't live anything. I don't love anyone. You're not listning. I don't know what to do. I hope I can cry tonight.

if I could stand to be less diffficult

and a song

unfinished, of course.

You woke up

And fluttered out of touch

You fell asleep last night with eyes brighter than I could imagine

And in the darkness of sleep

I couldn’t talk to you

And I could give you a little more time

I am a coil twisting out of shape

I am a congregation of feelings and wine

That will stain your hands in ways

That are not coming off

And you chain yourself to the breeze

And I’m climbing trees

To get away from my family

Up where I can feel the breeze

As you blow over me it’s true

It’s true I do like you

Oh if I could find

I’d take you out of time

I shook me out I

Tried to stop it I

Tried to stop it I’ll

Have to see I’ll

Let you know what I believe in now

Oh if I could find

I’d take you out of time

I’ll put you where

I don’t care

I'll put you where

I don't care to change you

I just care what you do

Who I am without you

I’ll put you where

I’ve never seen the air

I need to breath

That I force in and out of me

Through a weird contraption
That I never took the time to understand

I am not doing all I can

It’s just like me

two new poems.

You can’t see the rain anymore
But I still see drops in the puddle
I can’t feel it on my skin
The shit I’m in.

They’d fill your museum
with the parts cannibals use to pick their teeth
too many fingerprints underneath
your skin, the parts that they won’t eat
the shit I’m in.




I’m never gonna die
At least not tonight
No not tonight
Not tonight
Not tonight
Not tonight
Not tonight
Well, I might
Boy, turn around, fight fight.

Darkness on the edge of Gastown

At three a.m. Lori turned off the movie she was watching and went to bed. As she lied down she smelt fire. It wasn’t tobacco smoke or burning food, this time she knew it was fire. There were no alarms on her floor, something she had exploited for many nights of gratuitous pot smoking, but now it was dangerous. She rolled onto the floor, pressed her ears to the cold tile and heard, faintly, the ringing of a hundred smoke detectors on the levels bellow. She hops up and emptied swiftly her backpack, hearing her small mirror shatter on the floor. She began filling it up in a hurry with her laptop and charger, hard drive, two pairs of socks, underwear, a towel, toothbrush. And that was it. She looked around her room. Was there anything else she considered necessities? Anything else she need for being displaced for a few days? She slipped on her most comfortable jeans and a sturdy light parka. Was there anything else she would save from the fire? She never liked having a tv anyway. She sat on the floor and stared at her bookshelf. What would a copy of One Hundred Years of Solitude cost at the strand? Eight bucks? There weren’t any records that were special. Most sub-par bands with blue seven inches. She could pick up any Beatles’ record again from the shop down the way. If she could take her couch out the window with her she would. If she could take her fridge. She looked at her pairs of shoes. She slipped on her newish black vans. And took a second to find which one she should take as a backup. She couldn’t find one among them that she liked. The smoke smell was getting stronger. She stuffed a pillow in, pushed it down to hide the half of the bag that was still empty, slung it over her shoulder and cascaded though the window, down the fire escape, feeling her feet hit the ground after the last jump, kindly. She walked away, going to her closest friend who lived four avenues westward. If the flames reach her apartment than she’d loose her stuff and if they didn’t she’d move back in once everything settled. She didn’t want to talk to the other residents who congregated out front. She didn’t know any of them. She did know Jeremy who lived next door, the only other person on her floor. They smoked pot together sometime. She ran into him while he was returning home slightly drunk earlier that night, making jokes about fish and trombones. She found out two days later that he suffocated to death on the smoke, still asleep.

gouge away

“Not every day is worth writing about,” he had said to her once. But every day has repercussions. She had punched him in the nose once at the brooklyn flea. He had picked out a dress that Jessica would have worn. She was not going to be like Jessica.

A Departure

            He jumped the fence on Flushing near North Elliot Street, or Portland, he didn’t remember. It doesn’t matter. Of course it doesn’t, but there was a truth. It was one of those and his recollection should not rob a depiction of the events of the events themselves. They jumped the fence, him first than his friend, bikes lock up on Navy St two blocks away, a surprising uncertain walk along poorly paved grounds he always hated biking. Flashlights and beers. The barbed wire covering the fence had already been cut, which in a way was why they were there in the first place, they saw it in the daylight three or more weeks ago walking to Clinton Hill after he had his tire replaced in Dumbo. What a good day. And the wire was already cut and my god did it look inviting. The perfect youthful getaway in a sense. Like out of Tom Sawyer. They didn’t bring spray cans though, he thought it should be noted. They could have brought spray cans. It was likely what the infamous cutter had done when he hopped the fence, so to speak paving their way. Graffiti shamefully was probably more of a odd fantasy to him so look he didn’t actually do it. Hadn’t thought to. Shamefully, but he did hop the fence! And he did drink some beers in there, probably not overcome by wonder at the decaying structure but goddamn did he try. No one could say otherwise anyway, right? People will say he was overcome by wonder, that’s what his friend will tell people. As they used to say, not terror, but awe. Not that that kind of distinction means anything anymore. An echo of an echo. It was triumphant. It was powerful at least and triumphant. And he had taken some photographs, second long exposures. And then they had been caught by the police and then he sat here. And he didn’t have to be here, he hadn’t had to jump the fence, it should be noted. This was just some weird hypothetical like the rest. What makes this more real? 


3/28/2012

Another Girl

Stephen walked to 14th street to pick her up. In his mind it was thrity fourth street or time square, she had on a lush dress and hair down, something she never did, and he saw her as removed from reality. He saw her as a way out of mundanity and into a life of real events. Stories you could tell afterwards, not just stories you've read and can discuss. He knew she liked him. He asked if she was hungry, no, but they could go to an eatery if he wanted, but no, he wasn't hungry either. They lay on the grass in Tomkins park. He said he didn't like leaving the east village anymore hardly if he could help it. She laughed a lot at a lot of things. She smiled and put on and off big sunglasses and rolled over on the grass. He looked at her hips and remembered them. He knew there was depression under there. He had seen glimpses back when her hips weren't a memory. It's among what actracted him. Now what atracted him was her happiness. She was happiness, and she represented it, even more so because of that sad, and he wanted it in his life. He wondered, looking at her, lying on the grass, beautiful, if he really wanted her in his life. It was too easy for him to think about her as if she was not a person, to weigh the pros and cons of her. He hated it. He hated himself for it. He thought it had to be because of her transient relations with him. Briefly her hips were here and then they were not, he didn't get to talk to her again for weeks until now, lying on the grass, playing with her sunglasses. Everyone is a myth until you really know them. That can't be avoided. Everyone is a character in a poorly writen movie, one facet, one plotmoving purpose for being there. One personality. So he'll get to know her and he'll see the real human replace the cardboard cutout representing beauty and happiness and the human will be even better than the simple idea. He'll like her in reality more. Right?


He told her he thinks he likes her. She lauged. Really? Why? He didn't want to tell her. That she represented all this. He lauged and told her he didn't know. Liking someone is not really his style. He has to remember that he is just a cardboard cutout to her. He can ruin it later. He told her she should go out with him. She thought about it. He watched her lips as she bit them. Do girls really do that absentmindedly? Do they know how much it speaks to guys of sex? He watched her hips as she rolled over. He watched her hair as it was moved from her face. She told him no but she did it in a particular way. She told him she didn't think she could. She told him how much she liked him at one point and maybe now still. She told him she couldn't deal with it now. He knew she liked him. She liked him, right? She asked him if that was ok. He told her of course it wasn't but of course it'd have to be. They talked longer, about other things. Stephen stood up in the grass and wiped himself off.


Stephen walked into the party. Later he couldn't tell you wether it was the same night or two days later, not that he would have been talking to you anyway. He was sitting on the couch. A black couch, dark walls of the apartment. He liked that, you know. He knew she was there. She even came over and talked to him once. Half nerviously, knowing he was upset but wanting to come off as friendly or wanting to actaully be freindly, or residue of actually likeing him. He punched the guy she kissed later that night. He didn't have the bulk to do it. Cut lip, black eye, sore sholder, blue. He thought it would last longer. But it's alright. He saw it and thought he had to punch that guy. He thought, do people do that anymore? Isn't that possesive, sexist, worthless? He didn't think of her as a real person. He was ashamed of that. But this was the life of action she promised. This was the life that no longer existed in his generation. No one did this anymore. Stephen's fist concected with the guy's head and it was a story. Stephen felt his face meet a fist and felt it as if it was real. Then his sholder. It was too quick. No, he wanted to call, this should go longer! Stephen lay on ground as she yelled in sympathy and in anger and thought that he has lived his life today as if on paper. He thought about how nothing has deeper significance, there is no deeper significance. What he did today meant nothing, and no one knew what it ment except for him. 


you got me feeling like