sleep is stalking

there's no where to hide. There's whens, I would guess.

Okay, I give up, can't think of what else to write.

See His Pugnose Face

Otherwise known as walking, walking the wheel, walking it right. Left is communist, right is the way we walk. On this floor of the Turkish Sanitarium there is no American. You're one of us, I'm one of you. I hear you're writing an etude, a self-deprecating ballad for Bowie to sing.

Now that's what I call a swoon. I use a swoon to measure dimensional chasms, let's pretend they're synapses. It's a study in swoon, and one day I'll make Uncle Sucker pay for it, haha! Actually, it's not that funny. It's sad, it's meant to be sad, that's the meaning I want to impart. It's so sad when Uncle Sam is so senile, and so generous, and he becomes a character we care about, like Abraham before the writers of The Simpsons abandoned character-driven satire for shallow topical humour.

They'll be lining my pockets one day, the oracle told me, and refused to tell me any more, or the mescaline turned pedestrian and I blew chunks on the floor. But by then, when I subsist on arts patrons, I hope to be drooling poetry like Keats on auto-pilot. Or dragging pajama sleeves along the Berkley streets, as rumour has it I used to teach calculus in lecture halls. There's gotta be a lesson in that. Six hundred times around the wheel and you start to feel it. Ten to the power of six and you begin to see it. Your pinky fits your nostril exactly, pixels, perfection, telescopy. You lick your nipple, you suck your own dick, strawberry fields forever. Don't shut off the valve. Let it ride. Everyone knows you can’t leave the mole alone, no one expects you to try.

ce n'est pas

who turned up the gravity? who turned down my energy? fundamentally, it's physical - the mentality is a consequence - march fourth in the review mirror - this woman is painting the seaside landscape in this picture on my calendar, she looks so into it, she's having a moment - somebody set up this scene, to photograph - someone dressed up and got posed, for this scene, and got paid for it, probably a lot less than the photographer who sold it to the calendar making company who mass produced it, newfie kitsch

some people get paid less than others - this seemed weird, illogical - then i got used to it - it seems normal by now, and any different arrangement seems perverse - reward for effort and sacrifice is like hairy man-ass sex, not that there's anything wrong with that - i've learned that logic is not pragmatic, protest is not effective, and "hippie" is a damning label - there's more joy to be had in the grudging acceptance of the status quo than in trying to change anything - which is to say, not much joy, but little moments here and there - acceptance, as long as it's grudging, as long as you carry that grudge, write a song about it - no point in trying to change anything - if logic won't work then what will? when logic goes on strike, they send in the scabs

arise, chicken!

It's that club, in NYC dream geometry, where they beat you up for being a fag before you go in, even if you're straight. The club hires fag beaters for that purpose, it establishes your credibility. They all had to go through it, those celebrity patrons. Try it, you'll realize you aren't made of glass. Or throw away that golden ticket, we'll gild another one and give it to an orphan. If she can do it then so can you. It's just a matter of capitalizing on luck, by taking a beating, then they'll let you in the club. Where you'll suddenly see the possibility of being on an even keel with those artists who make piles of money, and some of them, infuriatingly younger, even a few of them local, gone nonlocal - well, now you're all initiates, but it will take some humiliating lessons before you learn the difference that remains between you and them. Like when that famous guitar player corrects you on your fingering of a difficult passage of Beethoven's Rondo a Capriccio - try not to act all surprised and draw attention to yourself, did you really believe the rich and famous artists are so soft and lite, they do nothing with their resources but show off their toys to MTV camera crews? Did you want to believe that so bad? So, you'll see that the gap is even wider beyond those doors, the acceleration of multidisciplinary studies, and as an afterthought, the aging process is quite a bit slower, but nevermind that for now.

Why am I writing this? Call it a Korean tea ceremony. Cigarettes were all I had. This is where the willpower really matters, where the rubber meets the road. Energy is mass times the speed of light squared. Zeno says the arrow never reaches worth. It's not worth the walk to get a bottle of energy drink.

Succumbing is becoming a numbing comfort, the only thing worth anything. There's a glut of sunrays on the outside, they'd do me good in theory - first principles regime, god save the queen - still superstitious, i'm not praying for anything, lest apocalypse begin - will work for food, will increase energy efficiency - what? no? no place for me - understood - it will make my family unhappy for me, stretch the boundaries of charity yet again, but, oh wait a second, i gotta take this call.

Tea don't do it for me anymore. Maybe it's this deck of contexts. In 2013, I bought my first NYC loft. I paid for it by coming up with a new euphemism for masturbation. They said it couldn't be done, but I did it. Scientifically. I used a million monkeys. Even more remarkably, I'd nearly forgotten what orgasm felt like, but I remembered what it thought like. Consequently, I enjoyed the benefits of owning a multi-million dollar apartment. Status, that's all I'd really wanted, all along. Sure, I flirted with philanthropy, in my youth. I flirted with self-destruction in adolescence. They gave me a key to the ICBMs in adulthood. Thought they could trust me with it. I'd be the deciding vote. I couldn't believe it was real. It was a surreal strata of status, but it was a pure sky blue in every direction, they showed me the location of every silo, they showed me computer simulations of what would happen in this scenario, that one. To give a nom de plume a raison d'etre for its next novel, I, yi yiyiiih. Which way to the furnace? Everything must burn.

intelligence

xx xxx xxxxx xxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

I could try and force that dream into the light of day. But what's the point? Really? You're asking me what the point is? Seriously? As if you don't know the point is what we make it? Yes, I know the point is what we make it. It's like, Whose Line Is It Anyway. And so what? So what. You know, your parents said "so what", when I started up this club. Some of them said, "see if I care". They said you kids wouldn't change. And you know what? You didn't change. But you changed me. That's right. You taught me that not everything is stupid. Some things are gay. And I thank you for that. I guess what I'm trying to say is... pack your bags, gang. We're going up my mom's ass.

And isn't that the real point?

The Unknown, you know?

Spaceman Spiff saw me adrift, gave me a lift. I said, thanks, want a spliff? He said sure, it's been a while. I said great, you got one? He laughed and said he found my humour quaint. I said I agreed, and furthermore, I found its quaintness quantifiable in this frame of reference, as long as our motion was uniform. Spiff said, wait, I'm gonna jack this thing up to 0.8 C. I said, that's the best you can do? We're never gonna get outa this cubic parsec at that rate, and he said yeah we will you dolt, how long you been in space? 80 percent light speed, that's relativistic as shit, it won't take but a minute by our perception of time, and Andromeda, that's a few days tops - you wants a drop off anywhere?

Why Andromeda? I asked. Why not? he said. But it'll be, like, a million years later in relation to your people back home, or wherever they are, I said. Is that about right? Close enough, said Spiff. So, they'll all be dead, unless they're going on their own interstellar jaunts. Or cryogenically freezing themselves, Spiff added. Yeah, that too, I said. So, they'll all be dead when you get there, probably, most of them. That's the idea, said Spiff. I hacked, well, my friend hacked into the Welfare Cosmos mainframe for me. See, I wouldn't have resorted to that, but it was getting ridiculous, every time I completed one of their forms, they'd contrive some subsection that I hadn't completed, or otherwise change the rules to postpone my claim for income support indefinitely. It was getting increasingly obvious they were never going to give me anything, so I had to take things into my own hands. Dealing with them long enough, you learn how they think and thus, how to sneak around their security grid. All I needed was to convince Carlos it could be done. With his know how, we got it done.

To be honest, I still can't even believe it really worked, I could barely convince myself, but lo and behold. So, I filled up my bank account with a few zeros. Man, I can't describe how weirdly great it felt to stick my card into a machine and, you know, just be able to type whatever number, and then have credits come out. And then get a receipt with numbers on the left side of the decimal place. So, I bought myself a full tank of anti-matter. First time I'd had that in, well, ever, I guess. It just felt so good. So good, I decided I'd fly to Andromeda, just for the fuck of it. Maybe for more than the fuck of it, but certainly for the fuck of it. And, well, I thought maybe I'd dry out there. Have it be a spiritual pilgrimage, to the unknown. The Unknown, you know? That's what I've always worshipped, I finally realized. The only thing worth worshipping, the unknown, the only thing godly enough for me. The only thing that could maybe be better than substance. Absence. Listen, I've never told anyone this. People think I'm some kind of a saint, or at least a respectable merchant, or at least a scoundrelous pirate - but in truth, i'm not even good enough to be that - i don't keep the armada in employ with dastardly deeds - i don't do anything really, except abuse substances - at least i used to deal, but i don't even do that anymore, i only consume - and it's consumed me, it's the only thing i know - i need to know something else - this galaxy is tapped, for me - i'm gonna high tail it out of here.

I said, wait, you tried synthetic ketamine yet?

Spiff said, woah, did you say Ketamine? Woah. That is a name I have not heard in a long long time.

Funny story, I said. There was a derelict with a single cryo aboard. Old thing, send out 2012ish, I can’t remember. Me and my buddy Sapio found it while on a vespine gas recycling run. I help him out with that, he gives me a little cut of his puny government paycheque. Anyway, we thawed out Popsicle Pete, and he turned out to be a groovy guy, just kind of rolled with the waking up in the future thing. Turned out he had a stash of K, so we invited over some freaks who would appreciate and had a welcome to the world of tomorrow party – we were all giddy with the retroness of it, it was like Spanish Galleon treasure but with the extra added virtual reality malleability.

Sounds like something I woulda dug, back in the day, Spiff said.

Yeah, I would hope so. Anyway, the guy, shit I don’t remember his name, I still think of him as “Pete”... he did some asking, and, can you believe this, the stuff is still around! Man, he talked his way into the circle that manufactures ketamine, albeit from the atomic level up. And damnit, I haven’t made it back to that sector since, and I was gonna get his contact info, and, fuck. I’ve been kinda looking at shady looking people since then with this hopeful, could they be in the circle look, but I never say anything.

I know, said Spiff. I dunno how people do that, schmooze into the conspiracy, slick willies, that eludes me. I never got the social lube and scented oil that makes bullshit smell of sandalwood.

Yeah, same here. But I know it’s around and that knowledge is driving me nuts. Been trying to track it down and not having much luck. I was kinda hoping you'd know where I could... but I guess you don't.

Nah, I'm an old space dog, Spiff said. And set in my ways. Really just one way. And it's Superglu.

Superglu? Holy fucking Space-Christ, how are you still alive? I mean, that's so, so sad.

Well, yes and no, Spiff said. Mostly yes, but. You learn to live with it, if you don't die by it. I'm on the right side of the suicide bell curve. It's kind of a dream state. Like, you never get to heaven, but it's always underneath the crack of the motel room next door. Some people think it's like being a cockroach. Maybe I'll still be around after the next nanoplague. But I should be on Andromeda by then. Living large, or well, that's just one of those things you say, when you're set in your ways. A whole lotta crack battery babble, the kind Tom Green used to film, and not for its beauty, although maybe just a little, and not in that trash bag flying in the wind American beauty way. So maybe I'll be living small, maybe swimming naked through space, maybe somehow I'll evolve, or adapt, or conquer dimensions, and know the bliss of the electromagnetic wave in the vacuum.

Well good luck with that, I said. I'd stay inside the spaceship for a while if I were you. Are you sure you don't wanna go look for some keta with me, before you take off to the next galaxy? You really wanna turn your back so... inextricably?

K won't save me, Spiff said. It's too late for me. There's no pot o gold at the end of that rainbow.

There never was, I said. And so what? Are you dead set on Andromeda then?

I’m live set, Spiff said. I’ve never been more live-set in my life.

In that case, drop me off at Starbase 229.

rascality and sacredity

i am impotent, therefore i will trivialize existence - heretofore forthwith, with the wherewithall to withdraw henceforth, notwithstanding obsequious sublimity - not subtlety - i felt sublime when i was accused of sublimity - she meant subtlety, the distinction wasn't subtle either, but it made me feel subtly sublime, and i said so - i even imagined a make-up kiss in the haze of wake up, today, five or six years overdue, thus i overdid it, as i do everything when i do anything, but i used some new tricks, things i've been doing to deserving girls in theory for years, and they worked too, in real life, hypothetically speaking, they confirmed hypothesis to six decimal places, in theory

john read me a story about thomas the tank engine, then he let me sleep, it worked out alright, and if i'd been asked to do anything, i would have laid in bed anyway, thinking rascality is my sacred duty, my place being to make people feel better about themselves, gift them with the sublime emotions of contempt, condescention, and righteous anger

no swoon

no backwards, no forwards

no rev, yes, slow motion

crusty syringe mirage
flooded the market with

buck a pound poetry
once upon a time, certain words would have power
drama would be real

no keywords
gray hair, no hair

three mouths

warping the skull from inside the cavity

vivacity, this is life on hyperdrive

who are you to judge, just

live with the palsy pain, the cerebral

deformation, you’ll get used to the shakes

he says, look at her in her gliding machine

she gets by, and somehow things hinge on

you getting by too, like you’ll let down the team

if you don’t take the baton, and on this sawtooth sprocket

in the wound-up clock of the universe

the team will be let down, cause

what ya gonna do?

nothing

rhetorical

redundant...

.

i could almost believe there’s something livable

not in the sense of ability

but in the sense of quality

if you can muffle a laugh from a non-narcotic

high on life bubble

you can call it quality

i could almost believe there’s something livable

about it, since i nearly fainted this morning

and rode it like a rollercoaster, not fighting it

but feeling it, embracing the fading

he says, you can spend a millennia

running to the left of the screen

re-appearing on the right

but the only way to get anywhere in the game

is to climb the ladder, there’s quality

in cerebral deformation, if only... you...

are smart enough, strong enough...

to?

i can only say, i’ve taught myself to hate

those words, smart, strong, if not the

qualities they describe

id city subways

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El
Even
references in the ether, reflecting electromagnetic waves, not reflecting well on the Applican't,,he could have made candu reactors run five percent more efficiently, think what that's worth to the home owner, times a million - carving Saturn's younger brother out of soundwaves could have transferred to engineering, he would have seen the light, if he would have crawled through the crawlspace, that's what it's there for, we won't drive it home, except on the internet, interred in endless special olympic contests for claims of genetic superiority.

the worm fairy

in the ice-worm orgy, i just don't know - cause it's so glacial, the jest of the high sample rate - like there's anything to sample - there's no higher consciousness, just a lower consciousness, and maybe there's an aggregate outside but it adds up to planet-sized apathy - these are the times that i write, in ninety-six thousand hertz, i wouldn't type in any other context, it has to be the best, and anything better i'll define away to nonsense

i'll defend my ignorance, not yours, and not with a gun, but passive resistance, a lazy passivity, it's not a religion, i'll pull the lever that blows up the perimeter shallow charges if the alternative suggests, no, demands the certainty of getting up when i don't want to - it's not sweat that i mind, it's not blood either, really, that red stuff makes me feel absurdly stoic, it's easy to bleed a royal flush

waiting to see what motivates me, i could guess, my education's good enough, it came to me in an indian life, ah, so that motivated me, that knock on the door, the sleeping sickness hasn't yet progressed to that impasse. Pining for the dream through a bedtime story that's an allegory, afternoon nap for your crack-addicted kid, scored by aphex twin, the synth isn't him, he says, he thinks too much, my anthropomorphic ignorance says

blustery hoopla

too close to the zombies to laugh, or scream - i see nothing funny or scary about it - i see inner-workings, or what used to work, what used to get out of bed, for something, what was it? what used to be reliable, then fashionably unreliable, then just un - non-commital, out of commission

whatever this is, this problem i have that seems to underlie everything else, that i never talk about, what i don't think anyone would understand - it's getting worse, every day - there are days of reprieve, where i'm tricked into believing there's a way out - but on the whole, it's a spiral downward to deadness - it's being tired all the time - having energy for brief periods - a couple hours, three tops, then wanting to sleep - not that i can sleep all that time - it's sleeping a lot, and the rest of the time, slumping, wishing i could at least sleep instead of staying conscious to remain aware of this failing, weakening - but really wishing i didn't have this weakness sickness whatever it is in the first place

sometimes i think about chronic fatigue syndrome, wonder, conveniently, if i have that - i've run into two or more people who say, matter of factly, that they have it, and matter-of-factly collect disability money to supplement artistic income (yes, these two people make actual artistic income, pretty good for chronic fatigue), and they seem tired too, and a light flicks on in my head, and i wonder if i could be in the club, at least have a syndrome to justify this slothly manner, and at the same time, thinking, haha, what pussies, i may WANT to be in the CFS club, but at least i don't pretend to be, buffoonishly labelling myself with the confidence of a consumer of medical fashion, thinking i'm justifying whatever, although that leaves me with, uh, limited options for my limited mental faculties, that being laziness, or some nebulous dietary deficiency that will be pinpointed with this study, debunked by the next, ad infinitum - so i scorn the CFSers, in jealously, footnoting the hypocrisy i recognize in myself, as if i don't live off of charity by the name of family, stuffed fois-gras style, still hanging round the sweet scraps, not that it's not filling, it just comes down to the boring old hangup, the tired dichotomy, not willing to tough-love myself out of this situation, or love-tough into a hate-love relationship with the universe, so i'll just write on the impass, since i can't sleep, and having written, maybe sleep, but probably not - and probably not tip the fractal scales, probably not turn a bad day into good - but at least i don't live in haiti, hey, let's all do the good luck shuffle! no actually let's not - let's do the terrier dance, it's more distracting

all these things people want to diagnose me with - all i want for christmas is a label, i want to be chronically fatigued so it's not my fault - i've settled for settling for less, i guess, i hesitate to ask for a cure - coffee don't do shit for me - i miss the manic/depressive cycle when i used to do drugs, it felt so emotionally wrong, the guilt all the time, but - but what? when i was feeling guilty, i thought, i'd give ANYTHING, ANYTHING, just to feel a bit of tired mediocrity, the baseline, even if it's a lame line, but it was so much better, what i took for granted, than this profound nausea of nihilism i was feeling at the time - but, but now, i dunno - or do i know? maybe that's the hard swallow, i dunno

i shouldn't have listened to those old recordings, of state-bounded ecstasy, of insufflation every half hour, of the good drug, the keta - what we loved about the keta, on creek street, was the come-down: there wasn't one - i bargain with a hypothetical, i say, if i'd just stuck with the k, i'd never have had to pantomime my way through this absurd monastic charade, with all the consequent out-of-character flaws and failings and disingenuously positive reviews - but i had to go and run the gamut, get as debauched as possible - i shouldn't have listened to those old recordings, because now i'm picturing myself with a crowbar, wondering how i can pry my way into the drawers of a veterinary clinic at night - the disasters of recent girl-chasing have left a determination to get high, although it's about as tepid a determination as any i've got today, it's apt to take me nowhere, yay, ye can all rest easy, weary ladies and gentlemen

the feeling is progressive digression, future retro, it weighs me down, not in a bluesy tom-waitsy way, not in any way that pays, not with poetic allegories for change, and day of the dead jollity on the bright side of the moon, no, it weighs me down on a computer chair, typing words to a void, between long moments of staring, before going back to lie in bed between the hours of four and five AM, with the lights burning, and the heat dish radiating, clinical appraisal of ankle rash, taking my 3 vitamin d, and my multivitamin b, and my zoloft, and my champax, it's gotta help, right? but i do admit, i miss the feeling of wanting to fuck a mailbox