going

.
.
listen
.
.
happy thoughts, happy thoughts

it seemed like a good idea at the time
it doesn't seem like a good idea now

since you forgot what it was like
you must endure the end again
the beginning of the end again

hellclouds over liverpool
cannibals under new orleans

art will save me
shade will save me

hallucination is salvation
is hallucination

control is fakery, creating a reality
reality is control
control is fakery, he's making my reality
reality is control

control is fakery, creating a reality
reality is control
control is fakery, they're breaking my reality
reality is out of control

so much grit in luxury
it's modern fugal history
reality is control

this will save me
this will save me
this enslaves me

going, going, going, going, gone

why am i here? where is the way?
i've tried the will, it didn't pay
am i the savior, like they said?
can i just crawl back home instead?

since you forgot what it was like
you must endure the end again

Some Other World Convention

Conventions. Webster’s dictionary defines “conventions” as the plural of convention. It’s the First Annual Montgomery Burns Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Excellence. What was I gonna say? Something about selling out. Get to the bloody point, man.

Societal conventions. I used to watch David Bronson or Broadside or Brawnstein or Whatever’s “dating” phoneline infomercial on CTV, every night at 3 am, on my little fuzzy TV in my bedroom, because it was on, on my own TV in my bedroom, even if it was shitty reception. It was that or CBC, and if there was no good foreign film on, or at least one with nudity, I would watch whatever was on CTV. The Dating thing had a lot of clubbers showing skin, up to, but not including, genitals. The females, that is. They seemed like adults to me, then. After interludes of aggressively non-hip music in some middle-american dance-club purgatory, they would cut to video personal ads. One of them was a tall blonde. “My name is Sharon, I’m 28. I know, I’m old. I’m looking for...”

Oh forget it. Can’t recall what insight was so profound I had to write it in essay form. I just have to end this downtrodden day with a few words, some verbal defiance. I’m edgy in the burbs. Micromanaged. Waiting for my ship to come in. I’ve set the bar lower for a homeworld. The last world would do. Oh, this oh so earnest striving for starched collar mediocrity.

Can’t wait for the night to fall. Things will be better, I’ll be alone to work on my album. Still, can’t remember ever feeling this soulless. Even when burned out, drugged out, and defeated, there was soul implied by the void. Now I’m staying clean, running a rat-maze with no discernible exit in job hunting limbo, hoping to bootstrap myself out of this rut after i’m hired by the hundredth employer, the one who values something other than bullshit, so I can raise enough capital to, I dunno. Jobs come in three flavours, the nine-fifty, the ten-fifty, and the ten. I don’t like the curve that implies. No wonder I feel whatever this is.

Watching paint dry

beats flagging - but it's all academic.

What are my silly likes today? What are my silly fears today? Why am I walking amidst the commoners today, hiding? What trip am I on, that makes me question everything, not rhetorically, but futilely?

Do the hectrizm, it's a chizm in yo chasm. That's not a suggestion, it's a commandment. You can do the locomotion if you want, but it's a tertiary objective.

the dead and the naked

Senorita Viva loves the lie. Anything she says can and will be used against her. Let's not make an issue out of this. Let's consign it to the filing cabinet. There's money in selling furniture with image, personality, charm. Love the leather. If you smile long enough, you'll feel good. Fake it till you make it. Objection your honor, calls for speculation. Sustained.

I'll go into the witness protection program. Senorita Viva is my name. I'll order some badly cooked Italian food, it will be alright. I won't think about that thousand dollar night. If people need to mention their compromising fantasies at meetings, I'll think about something else. Plenty of things to think about. No spirit. The spirit got sucked dry. This is my anti-meditation. Then there's the stop smoking medication. Maybe it will flatten me, inure me to indignity, do I deserve any less? If you're culpable, make it cope-able, at least, Senorita Viva, and trim those sideburns, it's called grooming, make a habit of it. The stock market don't depend on it, but your bank account might.

Yo, thou, you're due for some nerves, remove the stone of shame, attach the stone of TRIUMPH! Nobody said it would be easy. Just easy enough so you don't get hardened. So you keep coming back, running that prodigal circuit, transistors. The tents are for former child molesters, the kids don't go out in the woods anymore, so, former molesters. The woods are tranquil, there's ancestor spirits there, until the news crews shows up, a COMMUNITY of sex criminals! But that's okay, no news is bad news, it's an indian casino compromise, exposure, haha. Ha. Ah. Fuck.

spoiler alert

I'm breathing, sharing air molecules with the earth's population in aggregate, sharing atoms with my ancestors. God's breath. Whoopdefuckindoo. What a time to foist deeply spiritual literature on myself. I made it through the Glass Bead Game. I even wrote notes on some parts I thought were cool. Some of it stirred something in me, like the future society within society: art and thought has progressed to the point where nothing new can be created, and a certain honesty and acceptance about this has dawned. Hence, the glass bead game, a godly passtime. That is something that resonates for me, horrifying yet tranquilizing. And the end, the death of Joseph Knecht in the glacial lake, that was a shocker for me, I admit, and beautiful in a way I can't justify. And the maya epiphany of the Indian Life, I haven't overdosed on Hinduism yet, so there was room in my blood-pumping organ for a bit of maya. All in all though, it was a chore slogging through those 568 pages. It found me at the wrong time. I appreciate the gift Rose, you're so sweet. I should try the Bukowski book you bought me. I brought it with me to this rock.

I'd never call myself an atheist. The word is too specific. It's a merit badge for boy scouts, self-satisfied, self-proclaimed intellectual realists. I'm non spiritual, that's what I am. Spiritually dead. Tried to read Spiritual Quest. The more pages I read, the more disgusted I became. The meaninglessness is overwhelming. Life is like a box of chocolates. Stupid is as stupid does.

The incredible string band is playing in my head. Maya... Maya... All these things. Lovers, his Loins. Thanks again Rose, you reminded me of that cool song, and the fidelity of my mind's ear has increased exponentially, in the midst of this cabin fever delirium, a kind of sensory deprivation. I forced down some seafood stew here at the Wiseman Center, it was alright in a weird sort of way, I even allowed breath through the nasal passage after it was all gone. I've been the Ugly British Columbian today, ungrateful, letting loose, bitching, cursing this province, as if it needs the hindrance. Checking myself by remembering all the cool people, the charm, the love. I'll write a checklist.

caffeine-ridden semen

Hard work will save us. More specifically, Blake said hard work will save us. More specifically, he (you know who I'm talking about now) said, hard work is what it will take, to solve our problems, "our" being people, and that's not such a big deal. Or something approximating that, is what he said. So there, I worked out a fragment. And that's not such a big deal. Fractal memory banging off the mandelbrot shell, neuron-pong. The a, misdirected pronoun. An article of faith or delirium. Yeah, but this that and the other makes her shake with recognition when she wishes she were something other, wearing a necklace of retinas, juggled by tendons, judged by no one, like they drag the lake - it couldn't pass for the back of a plaster support.

In times like these, I often wish I had a bucket of pine-tar. It helps me grip things. Come to grips, go to grips. A good all around substance for when you're slipping and sliding, and mumbling, and miming, and going through the motions. In times like what? Well I could say, but it's so mundane that it isn't worth an explanation. Un-non-sequitor: mundanitude is not WHY it isn't worth an explanation. It isn't worth an explantion because... it's unholy. And everything follows from that. Sapphires, rubies, emeralds, every good boy deserves fudge. The necklace jiggles, in case you didn't know, and it juggles, for your information, and it judges, in mundanitudinous robes. Maybe I only found my calling when they sentenced me to five minutes in Shawshank. "Just give me FIVE MINUTES with him, your honor". True justice isn't hard work, it's play. Or so says the next stain on the assembly line.

I'll tell you a secret: I haven't slept in half a day. But nobody seems to notice. No one is the loneliest number. And I don't care about any heartache I ever had that I don't have now. It's all juvenalia, everything past. Life goes on. At some point during the day, I manage a sneer. Exhibit S, if it will please the court. The jury, do they consider themselves cynical? Cause if so, they may find my jaded pretense charming. It's just that, well, I want an ellipse, but they won't give me the time. Like there's not enough time. Only aeons to go, arches of them vaulting higher than your office towers. They're not my office towers, but I admire them as I did the major league baseball franchise that played in the nearest adjacent metropolitan area... But they will wait, and call it deliberation, and they'll think they're being deliberate, drooling towards consensus, a thin gruel of justice, pooling on the floor, combining with moral fibers.

A series of spheres with mandelbrot meaning juggles and jeers - at me, the center of the. Contri. Langue. There's a grant in that. Life goes on, and someone else pitches a sitcom that will become a series on a major American television network. I got AIDS from watching you. My brain makes strange noises, tearing sounds, pops, when I come out of a dream suddenly, like the coming out of the dream was the result of the noise - and it's beyond creepy, like I'm "hearing" my brain, like maybe something clogging the synapses, synthetic chemicals that won't metabolize, fragments, deposits, foreign objects, things that precede strokes, aneurysms. I hope if that happens, I'll quickly be in the zone where I won't know this, but I might know that. We'll say anti-gnosis, like anti-matter, anti-time, maybe all this and that started in the past, maybe it leads to a tweaked eurethra and the crack of light from under the black door on the black field, as a weak brain signal, an image composite with limbic undertones, yes, limbic undertones, those limbic undertones, overlaid on a retina, in an upside-down eye, being fed by a head looking out a car window, what they call a child, meek and mild, what they call a christian upbringing, the merciful kind, no Perceval trial, cause there ain't no grail, unless they chroloformed him after baptism, the water was holy and spiked, and that's alright, until they draft you for the, whatever it was called, in Kurt Vonnegut's "Player Piano", where you're a worker bee, but they call it the military.

Weasel will dream in a minute, hopefully with no tire treads to mark it up. There was a good one, he almost remembered it for a second, this male weasel. The weasel is me, just to make that clear, because I'm stuck with this slack smear, and sick of fragments making anything mean anything, can't see nothing in that, but a mudslush slick on a window, and why am I a weasel? Cause I left a good-hearted girl from a heartless world to fend for herself on the streets after I promised I would come back to the shelter and see her. Why? Cause I wanted, I dunno, sweat relief, peace of mind, and I mostly have it, and I guess it's all worth it, for that sweat relief, because they don't make guilt like they use to - but we're still stuck in mud slicks and tire tracks, and those industrial grade cleaners never quite get it all out.

Snow Trek - the next veneration:

I know how it looks. But honestly. Your honor. On the evening in question, persay. I was sitting in class, with nothing to say. And anyway. Everything will shortly shatter. Into a hundred giant gestalts. Give or take a dozen.

I could slather my nu-paradygm personality all over everything. And what is not forbidden is mandatory. According to this slithering seventies cum nu millenium metaphysics. Which works for me and you, as long as you consider me uncircumcised - I'll misdirect you, during my physical nordic examination, by claiming my tooth is KILLING me, I mean, I may be a fine upstanding youth, revering the fuhrer like any sane person, but my TOOTH hurts, and I must be serviced, and despite the losses on the eastern front, we've got good dentists here in berlin - and that faggot won't fondle my balls, not when my perfectly good molar is sending imaginary tentacles of pain sent by jehovah, whoever he is, who coached my performance, and damn, was is good, so good, it was never even nominated for an oscar, but is on the CBC foreign film late night loop, and what more could anyone ask for?

And it says more about myself than anything else, self-cannabilization tastes like a bad hot dog, but the gray poupon is to die for.

And once you've moguled the bumps on the bunny hill single diamond, nevermind the powder in the trees, i'm not one to poeticize about that, i just gawked at the gawkers, gawking at the trees, smugly skiing my ass to and fro, here and there, back when i had the confidence and care to embark on such schemes, and non-sarcastic love of the snow

but i'll maximize experience in words, even if it hurts to think, with brain cells swelling, and chemical reactions, i won't recite neurological poetry, but you know, i'll prolly improvise some, until sigor tells me not to

weasel dreams

weasel sleeps
dreams, thankfully
sweating in the chocolate factory
candy and drugs in the mall
ghosts of sexual union

crumble

can’t sleep, stomach aching

i just want to ... blank ...
i just want to blank ... blank

forget it then, forget the trinkets
forget the women and girls
forget the new band, that can wait
for never, i’m not a flake, maybe next time
i won’t make any more promises, everything can wait

the vacation is non-refundable
but the quease is on the house
writing helps, i’ve read
to ease the quease
as long as everything’s unplugged

where’d that carrot go?
oh, it must be in the mud
where’d that rabbit go?
oh, he’s wooden after all

Captain Shinto's Chortling Buddha Power Hour

I want to go into the mountains and milk gemstones and mine goats. The beautiful mountainside beyond the FECK sign. I want to go into the mountains and milk gemstones and mine goats. Bad things happen here, but nothing's real. I want to go into the mountains and milk gemstones and mine goats. Until I get bored. Then I want to stop mining goats and milking gemstones. And see what's waiting for me, where things are real. It sounds like a pretty sweet deal. Like the dealer who could have ripped me off, but didn't. There are no marks here. Or everyone's a mark, so no one can differentiate.

avatar smile

i just realized, i like smilies

not the stupidly souped-up annoying animated ones, but the normal smiley face icons that transform your :)s - because i find it hard to smile naturally when i'm talking to people, even if i naturally want to, the nerves get in the way - but online, i can smile with a button, and it feels natural

the nerves are strangling me today, but i accomplished a few things - had my first newfoundland jam session - man, it reminded me of nelson, a little apartment crammed with a mandolin, banjo, guitar, and half a drumkit (as if nelson owns country bluegrass jams, heh) - so i might have to limit my sounds to piano and occasional organ, but the songs are good - thank god, no shitty covers

so i can feel a little less bad about the mountain of things unaccomplished - all the homework piling up - maybe i'll start by learning the songs - still procrastinating on the mellowtron

synthetic emptiness

nervent

immanentizing the eschaton - finiky, cheking on my illiterati cuties and any other messages there might be, in this no-bidding war - let's call it a progessive possessive disease - giggedy - no way i can do this sober, haha, where are some pills, intoxicants, poisons, mouthwash, anything? just kidding, gonna smoke a deathstick, ah... the good ol deathstick - and i might need another perrier to get thru this

i was at a boring meeting today doing the church/steeple thing with my hands clasped together, and the way my fingers were bent looked really cool, with the lines splayed out - i thought, i have to draw that - so i took out a piece of poster paper to remind me - might be a deal-breaker, this explication thing - lord knows i'm a voodoo chile, voodoo chile - giggedy giggedy goo!

o-over-e-extend-ed

oh man - it's alright - i think

just need to retire, build a fire, a camp site, the unknown i'm chasing is burning my fingertips, my pre-cogs are spinning off their sprockets - it's like, unfulfillment is my comfort zone, attaining anything i'm seeking is too scary - or maybe it's just that i made too strong a brew of coffee to deliver flyers and i'm still buzzing like a honeybee, and feeling dreadful and guilty for ego tripping and luxury, and over-extending, reaching for too many people, and all the calming mp3s of droney voices aren't calming me down - i need a shower and maybe a morsel of food - and i need to clean my place, but i dunno if i'm up for it - and i need to sleep to wake up today and finish my deliveries, and lest i forget, get another 3 bundles of flyers from the telegram, cause, my fault, my fault, i didn't count right when i re-checked for the delivery guy, and of course, i gotta resolve the issue of my accidentally voided cheque, no one else is gonna do it for me, i need that money, for my trail of debts and i think i need a doctor's appointment, a neurotic hypochondriac cheque in, what's with these withdrawal symptoms? i'm taking the same dose of SSRIs, maybe i should quit, do you know anything about SSRI withdrawal? they never do, but they could give their blessing, i'll feel smart when i tell them i'll compensate with 5htp in low doses on a full stomach as the spring thaw comes, and by the way, i need champax to quit cigs, cause the unfiltered tobacco debris is mixing with this pre-cold mucus and it's hitting home how black my lungs are getting, so, what's purpose, what's productive? composing mellowtron music for my dad? yeah, one of many things i feel too fried to do - contemplating mario kart to wind down, or would it wind me up?

it's always the ebb, or a power surge, i don't got the wattage to run the energy that pulses through me when i open the gates, eh? oh well - sounds like a good sign off - oh well - tapwater and vitamin pills

voodoo sex torture

playing with dolls, posters on my walls

impossibly pretty girls, improbably

young and womanly, like an escher illusion

imagining life before zoloft and addiction

wounded weekend warrior, online botched casanova

noveaux-independent, dependent on fantasy

plinking quickie personalities into my

two dimensional goddess bodies

i could never create characters

females least of all, but my dreams, man

they feel so real in my dreams, like that

blonde bounty hunter from the redneck family

who had me by the balls, but looked at me

like i was a human being, not a category

maybe a loser, but at least in the game

trainset mysteries

chemical imbalance - something's different - tolerance to zoloft? - the creepiness of feeling the brain fade out for a second like a DJ brushed the board, like a rogue rest in an unwritten fugal voice

was working on the railroad tracks in bed last night and well into the lazy sweat-slathered morning - woke up relieved, i didn't have to confess to murder for a few thousand dollars, murder or maybe just grand larceny, or something, crashing a truck into a river, pulling some scheme with my wet-worker robino from my noveaux-middle class place in the office tower above the river where the railroad bridgeworkers spend their paycheques on beer, and pull their own low-grade scams, while me, with the novelty of a lever, a tonka toy lever to the coordinator class, but something i could use to fuck over the rightful claim, of a family, a loud, cantankerous family, always the downtrodden bosses of people like me, like me, lucky to have them hire me for something a buck above minimum wage, that's union standard now, this is the future, like it or leave - well it was their truck, and i crashed it intentionally, didn't i? and they'd already lost their car to the rigors of roadwork and work and roads, but robino and me were sure we could pull it off, just destroy a few files, "clean" the office, and then we'd be minted, funded for party, it would all be worth it for that, we could get the real drugs, no need to lie to each other, that's what it's all about after this exhausting sprawling labor camp lagoon that never seems to end, oh, there's winter work coming. But now the navy cops are pouring into this building, I'm directing them to this and that file, acting suspicious, giving them tips, ingratiating, assuring them I'll help them get to the bottom of this atrocious crime against a poor but respected family, someone will pay - it's looking worse and worse for me, like that payer will be me, and i’ll be doing jailtime, and i’ll be like oscar wilde without the profound letters, and i won’t be able to talk about what happened, assuming i ever make it out, and i feel a confession coming on like a projectile purge, my mind’s own emetic, a confession to the most merciful ones in the world, who would be my mom and dad, i guess

what a sweaty wake up, and the worst dreams are still kind of nice, working for running locomotives and half-finished tracks - never got to the party - got wet though, it was sunny and then it was night - and then it was reality, except with no color, but still nice, like a jimmy stewart movie, but i didn't see no harvey, but i guess he's waiting for me, springing some trick that will make everything make sense, so i'm waiting for the miracle, see? i dunno why i try

the ritual of CHUD

i need a ritual, the ritual of CHUD
i need a song like this town needs a flood
i got nothing to say and nothing to pray
so just bite my tongue and drink my blood

let's do it in the sewers while the video plays
i'll return the favour, then everything will be right, somehow
not wrong-headed, and trivial, and meaningless
like it is, now

so much to do, so little fuel for it all
i'm the laziest thrill-seeker i know
not happy with anything less than hookers and blow
and wanting it fed-exed to me, and why not?
sure i worked for some good things
but anything great that ever happened
was handed to me, almost makes me wanna worship luck

not wanting to look for
more
work
yet more work, yeah, fuck off, you
didn't give me the job you promised, i cerebrally-recorded
your verbal contract, so you, the you that is the world
can make do without my services, for a while,
i got enough tasteless gruel on my plate
it's frosted with pure refined sugar

living with the extended family, some inlaws, a cousin
and the other grandparents here for the holidays
i see a knit of people happy with less thrills
stately, family, working for things for family
they got soul, and i got a hole, sucking
cognition through the void, i don't know
if i WANT to be happy with less thrills
like i'd sell my uninspired getting by non-spiritual life
for the real thrills i've been chasing
that have always been just out of reach
the good stuff, cause it's all chemicals anyway
it's chemicals that coagulate to DNA
a strand for a cell for a healthy young body
a gene for curviature, the other half i crave
and then, the stuff that binds to my receptors
that would be fool's gold, that would weigh down
another lever of curiosity, anyway
i'm getting a head of myself, and the scuplture
is practically accurate but unimaginative

there's no working for anything
when you're in the dripping sub-sewers
there’s retro-time, there’s deadlights
there’s... a music video

Tending a Dying Garden in the Fort Williams Atrium

Twin planter islands

brick lobby diamonds
junk Fortis soil leftover from the ‘80s.
Is this poinsettia circling the drain?
Will another day of water bring it back from the brink?
A pointless point of pride to contrive
botanical stewardship, my first week on the job.
Empathy for plants, no one yanked me
from my fetal stage, guess I should
return the favour.

Capitalist irrigation:
If you water them right, they won’t be
able
to share.

Granddad reminds me I’m at the
“bottom of the ladder”
during the dreaded drive to work
that’s what they call this,
as if I didn’t know.
“But you gotta start somewhere.”
Yeah, and you gotta finish somewhere.

Insufferable questions continue:
How much am I making, what do I do,
mainly wash floors, is that what I mainly do?
What else? Yeah, but what else?
Do I know what construction workers make?
Continuing comparison to construction workers
as if I’d be doing this if I could get anything better.
I can tolerate, even like my work
if I’m not reminded of my place, again and again.
I can find motivation for a paycheck, if not purpose
in working on the bottom rung, the floor-scraper
let's see you climb without the first ten, turtle-king.

He’s not ill-intentioned, just ninety
a charming eccentric out of touch old man
not “arrogant” exactly, just innocently oblivious
to anything outside his own awareness
and a master woodcarver, he’ll remind you
frequently, as if you’ve forgotten
refreshingly earnest in earned vanity.
If I didn’t say anything nice
in the only poem I’ve ever referenced him in
before he circled his own drain, I’d be sorry.

I think about my departed grandma Alice
more these days, memories hit me.
Death just happens, there’s no dealing with it, no bargains.

not a boy, not a man

i'm a slave 4 u
hit me bitch, one more time

i'm a slave 4 u
hit me bitch
with your lashes
batting three-thirty-three

i'm trying to learn
while i'm buried in snow
that's what we call, the learning blanket
i'm trying to be the ice-man
dunno if the game's worth the candle

well, there you are again

cause you have the right to catch up on my friends
and just cause you can, you think you should
well, the turncoats will give you a token glance
i've resumed despising you, cause you've earned it
with your continued selfish stupidity
the predictable incapacity for empathy
and i'll return the favor, won't think
about what your reason might be
i'll consider you reasonless
a blot on the landscape

well that was ten lines too much
for that subject, next