Story: The Finger

Yesterday I was feeling lower than low. Homeless, penniless, stinking, sticky, alone, with a sharp pain in my stomach from hunger. Walking down a street where an endless stream of cars drove towards me and away. I felt the unholy weight of my uselessness on this planet. Like a ghost, nothing I did really mattered to anyone. I was powerless and impotant as the endless river of cars full of real people passed me by. People who did matter. People who had power to change things and make a difference in this world. Oh, how I hated and envied them. Was there really nothing I could do? Nothing at all that would matter to these people? If I killed myself they wouldn't even notice. My writings are read primarily by my mother, to use as fodder for insulting me and torturing me. What could I possibly do that would make the slightest shred of difference to these people, while at the same time expressing my deepest feelings about my situation and their society?

Without really thinking about it I raised my hand toward the on-coming cars and extended my middle finger towards them. The cars were passing quickly, but the response was immediate: Eyes widened in surprise, children pointing with laughter, looks of confusion, looks of anger. With this one simple gesture I had made a connection with the Others, I had communicated my feelings, and i had made a difference, however small, in their lives.

A small drop of warmth filled me. Almost like joy. Raising my finger higher and prouder I walked leasurly toward the beach. I must have flipped off a thousand people yesterday. And it felt great!

Later on I started singing repititions of the word "Fuck," in Operatic form, as loud as possible - much to the consternation of the tourists nearby. Looks of confusion and illness; clearly this did not have the same effect as The Finger, nor the same cathartic warmth for me.

A gesture is simple and fun and can't really be misunderstood, while a man screaming "fuck" is just sad.

Long live The Middle Finger! When the world's giving it to you, give it right back! You'll thank me for it.

List: MY Bum/Lunatic/Drug Addict Movies!

[My Movie Picks for Good Movies about the Bum/Lunatic/Addict Life! Not in Order.]

1) Down and Out in Beverly Hills (Oh yessss!)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090966/

2) Trading Places
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086465/

3) Basketball Diaries (Good book, too. Based on a true story.)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0112461/

4) Drugstore Cowboy
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0097240/

5) Barfly
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0092618/

6) The Big Lubowski (Of Course)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118715/

7) Naked Lunch
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102511/

8) Oliver Twist (Still valid today on the streets...)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0040662/

9) Le Miserable (Ditto)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119683/

10) Easy Rider (OF COURSE)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0064276/

11) The Fisher King (Quite Accurate Portrayal by Williams...)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0101889/

12) One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (The Bible)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073486/

13) Basquiat (Not all Bums are so Lucky, most go to jail for vandalism)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0115632/

14) I Shot Andy Warhol (Valerie knows what it's like)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0116594/

15) Crazy People (Okay, it's fun)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099316/

16) The Lost Weekend (Sometimes it happens...)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0037884/

17) Wise Blood (Not a bum, but a searcher all the same)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080140/

18) The Dream Team (More crazy fun!)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0097235/

19) The Devil's Rejects (Oh yeah)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0395584/

20) Strange Brew (They are Bums, right?)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086373/

21) Shakes the Clown (Kinda a bum, at least an Alchi. Get it, "Shakes?")
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102898/

22) Sante Sangre (My family life in metaphor)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0098253/

23) Holy Mountain (My spiritual path in metaphor)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0071615/

24) Wall-E (The picture of Fat, Lazy, society is very accurate)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0910970/

25) Life Stinks (I wish!)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102303/

26) Sid and Nancy (Too glamoris, needs more vomit, still pretty good)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091954/

27) Down By Law (Fuck, yeah!)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090967/

28) Man Facing Southeast (It's True!)
http://www.imdb.com/media/rm451252992/tt0091214

29) State Property 2 (Realistic-ish)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0403537/


Honorable Mention
1) Traffic (Drugs, yo, for real)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0181865/

2) Clerks (boredom culture)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0109445/

3) Party Monster (yes, this happens)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0320244/

4) Bad Santa (not all criminals are all bad, truly)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0307987/

5) Breakfast Club (That slacker guy you know is going to be a Bum)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088847/

6) 12 Monkeys (I feel it)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114746/

7) Repo Man (Lots of poor people)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087995/

8) Real Genius (that one guy who lives on campus at 40 is a great bum idol)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089886/

9) Broken Flowers (that's life, really)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0412019/

10) Dumb and Dumber (they're bums, come on)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0109686/

11) American Splendor (He's very poor, and realistic)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0305206/

12) The Craft (Hokey, but hey, it happens)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0115963/

Dishonorable Mention

1) Annie (You Wish!)

Poem: Go Home

I prayed to God saying
"I don't like where I'm living."
The next morning awoken
by the Police.
"But where am I supposed to go?"
I asked.
"home," the Cop said softly,
not unkindly,
"go home."

That's when the tears started.
It's so easy for someone,
who comes from a home,
to say "go home"
-I've heard it before
many times.

But how do I tell them
I don't have a home?
Never had a home.
Everyone must come
from somewhere.
But that doesn't mean they
have a home.

I havn't had a real home
since I was thirteen years old.
My parents sent me away
from there.
First to the Desert,
then to the Other Side of the Country.
There was no warning.
They said "two weeks of fun."
But they meant
Boarding School,
Punishment for Imagined Crimes,
Confinement,
Loss of all friends and social ties
I'd been building
for thirteen years.

Almost twenty years later:

My Father,
unable to put me in Prison,
still has a restraining order against me.
No home there.

My Mother lives with a man
like my Father.
She cares for him instead of me.
He's my replacement;
since she's had him
I stopped mattering to her.
Not my health,
not my schooling,
not my life.
Before she remarried
she put our house into
legal trust.
She said
"Jane, this house will always be yours.
I want you to know that.
My new marriage changes nothing."
Her new husband battered me
at their wedding
and because she didn't care,
no one else did.
One month after marriage
she sold our house.
No home there.

I sometimes hate
people who have homes,
or those who come from nice ones.
Though that's not fair of me.
They can't help the way they are
any more than I can.

Still...
I wish I had a
Permenant Place
that I could always go.
Somewhere safe
and warm.
With food, too,
and a bathtub.
Somewhere I'd always
be Welcome
and no one would
call me bad names
or hit me.

I probably always will wish this.
And it's a little too late,
for that wish,
to come true.

Thoughts: Resilience

From a 17 year old at UC Berkeley, to an 18 year old in LA making 30k a year/working 50 hours a week/AND going to computer programming school by night, to being homeless in Bakersfield at 20 to New Orleans, back to San Francisco working for an Internet company ALL on my own, to having back problems my parents wouldn't help a bit with, going to Mexico for help and ending up and opiate addict, so my back wouldn't hurt, then kicking opiates all on my own while my mom remarried a fat guy who hates me and sold out my inheritance for a Motorcycle movie.
At 22 I was making 50k a year, but I was so emotionally fucked about my mom and my dad and my back that I became a speedball addict. Got fired and took 300 bucks from dad because he wouldn't help me pay for rehab which he told the cops was 10k and then I wsa in court, homeless, and addicted. About two years later and I do 6 months in-patient at a rehab, close my court case, do two years in Sacramento at Community College, write for the newspaper, get my own place, get scholarships and grants to UC Santa Cruz and move there on my own at 26. Oh yeah and 1k a month from mom (which is nowhere near enough to pay for UC!).
I did great at UC, worked at the library for a year, but my back got much worse. I was x-rayed, MRI'ed, given epidural injections, physical therapy, and finally pain management - all of this while being a full time student in college. Mom refused to give me more than 1k a month, so I couldn't pay my medical bills at school, so I couldn't register for classes, so I lost my school-based medical insurence.
So I moved to Arizona where there is free health insurence for the poor and a University which specializes in what I was studying. I transferrred my UCSC credits to the University of Arizona and payed the 100 buck transfer-application fee, then moved to Arizona. - Where mom cut me off of my monthly 1k saying I had "broken the contract" for "dropping out of college." But I never did drop out. I just couldn't pay because of medical bills. Without her 1k a month for support in AZ i couldn't go to University of Arizona either. I'd even registered at Pheonix Community College for two Anth classes for the term that U of A took to evaluate my transfer application.

By cutting me off in the middle of college and my medical emergency, my mother created the "drop out" and "failure" that she loves to talk about so much. In reality I've always been doing my best and her rhetoric is just that, obviously, to any one who looks at the facts (my grades, ect).

I am the picture of resilience. Show me one single person more so. In fact, I dare ANYONE to try being homeless in San Francisco for ONE WEEK without money or friends. If you think what I do is "easy" or "fun" you try it, then we can talk about it. Until then, you'all can shut the fuck up. And have a nice day! =)

Repost: Letter From Mom (The Last?)

(Well, here's the latest, and hopefully the last for a while)

OH MY GOD...YOU ARE 29! Life is passing by...is this lifestyle what you want for yourself?

You know, other people have feelings, too. You had to take anxiety meds to answer my e-mail? What has happened to us, Barrett? Have you forgotten all the wonderful times? The movies we've seen together, the trips we've taken, the birthday parties, Halloweens, Wednesday coffee at Caffe Roma, weekend breakfast at The Eagle Cafe, other holidays and friends? Is it only the bad stuff that matters and that you remember?

I'm sorry that you feel that my e-mails are negative and since you don't appreciate the wisdom that I'm am trying to pass on to you, I see no reason to continue.

Bye,

Mother

Fictional Letter: Dear Son

Dear Son,
It's so easy, Son, why don't you just do it?! We have been telling you for years and you are still a total and complete failure for the sole reason that you didn't listen to us.
At any moment you could make the right decision, for a change, and finally be the good person you were meant to be. But for whatever reason you refuse to listen to us, your loving and benevelant parents who only want the best for you.
Yes: Everything you are and have ever been is a failure. But it's not too late! If only you just decide to change, then you can be OK. Because you are not OK the way you are now, that is so obvious we need not even say it. You are an unfortunate, criminal, self-pitying, parent-blaming, addict-bum, despite everything we have done to try and help you. We are totally innocent and you are completely guilty. We have never once made the slightest mistake, besides possibly loving you too much and spoiling you. Yes, that is the worst we did.
You were just a bad child since birth, for as long as we can remember. No matter what we did you would act out. Really you were a curse on our marriage. Everything was going wonderful until you were born, then you broke up our maarriage. We are sorry to say it, but it's the truth. You've been in the way since the begining and you have never stopped being a bother.
We are so sorry you choose to live the life of a homosexual drug addict bum. We wish you had chosen a better road, so we will not send you any money ever because we refuse to support you in your anal sex and spray paint inhailing.
We hope you grow up one day, Son. You are only getting uglier and stupider every day, so you'd better find a mate soon. Preferably an abusive one just like us.

Love,

Your Parents

P.S. Please get with it! Just become good! Do it! We want you to! You wont regret it! Make the right choice!

Thoughts: Entertainment

What do I miss most from the days when I wasn't a bum? Today it's Entertainment. The wealthy first-world Sheeple of planet Earth have lives filled with the most intricate orchestrated entertainments imaginable. From TV to movies to music to video games to sports to computers to dildos; the list goes on and on forever.

While the bums like me are expelled from this Gardebn of Eden-tainment. Confined to radios, books, newspapers, and simply watching everyone else.
The Sheeple flit from one mode of sensory absorbtion to another like butterflies; using thier brains like TV remote controls to change the channel whenever they want. God I miss it. While we, the poor, musr endure whatever is placed before us. We have little choice about what sensory inputs we can observe. Oh sure, we can try our hardest to be surrounded by enjoyable things (and you'd better beleive I do), but in the end it's simply too exhausting when your money needs to be spent on food, not movies.

This is why Alcoholism and drug addiction is so rampant amoungst the poor; they have no other modes of entertainment and what's worse, they are surrounded by other people who do have access to The Fun. The poor are an island stuck in the middle of the wealthy. Forced to watch the rich at play, see comercials for items they will never be able to afford, lust after sexual partners who would never in a million years be with them.

To be poor, in a rich world, is the definition of "Frustration."

Repost: Letter from Mom

(this is the latest e-mail mom sent me. Havn't seen her for 2 years or talked for 1,Um... I'm 29)

I resent Tom saying I do not want you to succeed. That is a blatant lie! He is projecting his own feelings onto yours. You know I love you unconditionally and I did everything I could to help you succeed. Doling out money is not the answer at this point...you are 28 and have to learn to stand on your own two feet. I paid you $1000/month as long as you were in college. You knew the rules!

You have convinced yourself (the mind can do that!) that you had a horrible childhood and your father molested you. You did not have a horrible childhood (I have photo albums to prove it) and your father did not molest you. Your father is a jerk with terrible values and he can be really mean but he was thrilled when you were born. We did our best to be good parents. Yes, we were limited but so are a lot of people. Jesus, be a little resilient...you sound like a broken record and as you get older, you are going to discover that everyone has a story. Yours is no worse than others. Go to a meeting and find out.

Also, as your mother I need to remind you, your good looks will not last forever...sorry, but that's the truth. It's life...it's reality.

Poem: Self-Myths

There were all these
Myths
about Heroin Addiction
that we beleived fervently.
Myths
that justified our continued use
like:

"You only become an addict if you
use it for three days in a row."

Looking back now,
these are the stupidist,
most obvious,
Lies
in existence.
But at the time we spoke them
like Ancient Sages;
Wise and Experienced.
Endlessly repeating our
"Universal Laws of Drug Use"
to all the other idiots,
future junkies,
who would listen to us.

How many beleifs,
which I hold right now,
will one day turn out,
to be just as stupid?

Poem: Heart

Walking down the street
with a snarl on my face
is not a good look for me.
Though one I've been wearing more often.
Catching myself in a car mirror,
I'm surprised.
I didn't know my face
could look so ugly.

"I tried to write Haiku
for you, but couldn't."
She said.
Because she didn't have any
special feelings for me.

I break my own heart,
it's nobody's fault
but my own.

Poem: Self Importence

The really atrocious part
is that I truelly believe
that I know better than she does
what will make her happy.
That I know what she does not?
No, not exactly.
More like, she does know deep down,
but it is covered by layers of
Trauma and protective reflex.
I can feel it in my gut,
see it in her eyes,
smell it in her hair.

But she does not trust me enough
to let me try.
And I am no rapist
so the world will never know
who was right.

Sad, no?

Story: TheRapists

I hate therapists. They're like abusive girlfriends. Everyone says I need therapy. Though it has never worked in the past and doing the same thing while expecting different results is the very definition of "insanity." Never-the-less I'm homeless and am pretty miserable a lot of the time, so every so often my defenses break down and I give therapy a try, full of shiny hopes that this time will be different, this time will help, fucking foo!
It takes about five months of phone calls and appointments all over the city, but finally I get an intake appointment with one of these magic therapists who supposedly help so much.
He's a fat, jolly sort, like a slightly young Santa Claus with a shorter beard and half-moon spectacles. Always careful to keep his "friendly smile" on. He carefully records the most intimate details of my life on a form five pages long, like it's common for people to tell their darkest memories about being molested by their father to a Mad-Libs game. Fighting tears and a panic attack I inform him of how suicidal I am and how anxious to begin therapy. The first session is next Monday at noon.
I look forward to the appointment all week, eagerly. Excited to be starting afresh on the road to mental health, anxious to tell a "qualified" listener all my worries and get some advice on my problems.
Getting to the secretary excited and happy I'm informed he called in sick, but he can see me tomorrow. The fat selfish fuck.

"But you don't have a phone," the secretary tried in a reasoning type of voice.

"Lady, I'm homeless, I don't have a lot of things."

"oh," she looked back at her desk,
"I'm sorry. But these things happen. People get sick."

On my first visit?! What a fucking amature. Psych101 taught even me how fragile a Doctor-Patient relationship is in the early days of therapy. Building trust is essential and vital to all further activities.
And this unthinking blimp cancels our first appointment, knowing I'm homeless, knowing I'm suicidal. He didn't even e-mail me. Sick today, but better tomorrow? Bullshit. The fat fuck was hungover or lazy.
This , this is exactly what I'm talking about. I'm supposed to get help from an anus like this? Incapable of even keeping a vital first appointment. Fuck him. He just quit from my case. I'll try their other Therapists, but if he is any indication this whole clinic is fucked. I've seen it all too many times before.
Amazing. Truly baffling. It seems to me, after so many experiences like this, that you actually have to be mentally well in the first place simply to put up with all the crap it takes to see a therapist and not get put off by all the stupidity.

Or maybe I'm healthy after all. Not ill enough to put up with ignorant behavior like this...
The world may never know.

Poem: Definitions

She said she loves me
and I wonder what she means.
I don't often feel like she loves me.
Is that my fault?
We must have very different definitions
of the word "love."
In fact, no doubt we do.
When I say it
I mean that
I'm trying to figure out
how to spend
the rest of my life
with her...
but only if she wants
the same.
I want to worship her,
massage her aches away,
and whisper words of comfort in her ear.
When she says it...
pfft.
Who knows?
Perhaps it means
she likes me more
than many others.
But when it comes to
making me happy,
well,
that's my job,
right?

Poem: No Room

There used to be places
that were comfortable and safe.
Gone there to rest
after working or playing hard.
Some at friends houses,
some at my own,
somewhere I lost them,
now I'm nowhere at all.
No comfortable space
for nigh on ten years.
No place to relax,
no shoulder for tears.
It's time to get going,
the check-out's at noon.
I just keep on walking,
keep missing my room.

Poem: Like Me

Going back home does not feel good.
The people there are my neighbors.
Never been good at being part of a group,
only a week now,
sick of them.
Latent waves of loathing emanate from them,
avoiding my eyes,
begging cigarrettes from me with snarls.

"He's not one of us"

Sinner said
and they chuckled sarcastically.
But they felt the truth in what he said.
We all did.
Probably imagining it all.
The only one who's clean,
shaved,
decently dressed,
young.
Not a methamphetamine addict,
is what he meant.
No, not one of them at all.
But living here all the same.
With all their tweaking, loathing,
and occasional blessings.

Even amoungst the damned,
I stick out
like a sore
penis.

Where is the place,
for a _______ like me?

Poem: A Magician's Job

The entities which the Magician had contact with;
Those he created to some extent (Demons and Spells).
Those who existed outside of him
and this world (Spirits of the Dead).
Those that existed which were so huge
that he was a part of them (Orisha and Archtypes of Nature).

These entities,
the Magician did not know which one's,
seemed to like to fool him,
to play with him.
Sometimes this ended with
wonderful, exotic, surprises.
But more often the surprises
were aweful and horrific,
or just mudanely frustrating and sad.
They all seemed to be for a purpose.
Like breaking the Magician's radio,
so he was forced to think,
forced to see,
forced to listen,
to the invisible world around him.

Because that's a Magician's job
and there is no weekend or Holliday,

Poem: Speedsters

I don't like speedfreaks.
Their lives divided into personalities of five:
The Loving, the Caring,
the Stealing, the Lieing, the Manipulating.
Not so different than everyone else,
but heightened and exagerrated.
Cartoonish
if it weren't so carnal
and really there in front of you.
Moving so fast, they stand still.
A Speedster is easy to rip off,
they never know where anything is.
And they do.
Constantly ripping each other off
like a mutated Trobriand Islander Commune,
consisting of lighters, tools,
and drugs.
But they can be kind.
They need new material constantly
to keep from cannabalizing each other entirely.
Their networks expand throughout the city,
the state, the sountry, the world.
Recyclers, loonies, wire-strippers,
car-part stealers, bike theifs,
building destroyers, the list goes on and on.
An invisible network of people,
a mafia even,
connected only by virtue of the fact
that they are all addicted to
the same chemical:
MethAmphetamine.
Like the internet,
a constantly changing network,
new nodes stopping and
being created constantly.
But somehow the drug runs them all
as a whole, coherantly,
for the past forty years or so.
And by the looks of it,
well on into the future.
The bodies conected to the
Speed Spirit
only grows in number
every year.

And It's girth looms.

Poem: I am That I am

So, there it is.
I and He are the same,
in a manner of abuse
and that is why
she liked me.
Though I don't think I
actually screamed at her,
and I never hit her
- I wanted to.
It was the ugliest
I could possibly feel.
It was every reason
I should be dead.
It was my abusive father
chanelled through my body,
everything I hate most about the world
and I was it, baby.
I tried to hug her after
and we did,
but it felt fake and forced.
The love had fled
in the face of our
disfunctionality...

What had started off,
and spent so much time feeling,
like the lovliest thing on earth;
stuttered, burped,
tripped, halted, and puked up
broken fire coals
of the worst
pain and shame,
the foulest
self-loathing,
and the firmly-based
realization
that I may never be able
to have a normal relationship;

Because
I am
So
Fucked Up.

Letter: To Blank

Dear Blank,

No amount of words can ever express my feelings for you. Why even try? Every words is a confusion. The only thing that comes close is when you are in my arms. Everything else is a lie and frankly, everything else you say is a lie, too. Since I do not beleive you, nor myself, there is nothing more to discuss. Either you agree or not. Please touch me, or go. I want all of you. I want you to want all of me. If you don't want all of me you are lying, or I am wrong. Either way - Goodbye.

Love,
Blank

Poem: The Pharoah's Lament

If I'm OK today,
if I'm on the right path,
than destiny's fucked,
fucked right in the ass.

I used to be Pharoah
and queens brushed my hair,
I now live on garbage
and use crates for chairs.

I once had great pyramids
which were built to the sky,
now living in cardboard,
it helps to keep dry.

So when mother tells you,
that bad pays a price.
I wish to assure you,
she says good advice.

Through reincarnation
I've been brought so low,
I have to now wonder,
what my next life will show.

Poem: For Christian

Can't look at your blog,
can't look at your webpage.
There is no "reason" behind it;
only feelings.
In this you are almost unique.
There is only one other
whose life I avoid
as much as yours.
Out of hundreds of thousands,
there are only two.
She... and now you, too.

I love your work.
I admire and appreciate
everything that you do,
to the extreme.
Paradoxically;
This is why I avoid it.
Because you are not mine.
I can not have you.
And I'm jelous of
every single one
of your fans,
who get to appreciate you
untroubled.
Pure you, just for them.
Wishing I could be them;
Enjoying your art
without being warped
by personnal prejudice
-impossible for me.
I avoid it because
I already love you enough.
I do not need to love you more
and I'm scared of what would happen
if I did.

You are so beautiful, everywhere.
Not just your face, though it is.
Not just your body, though it is.
Not just your mind, though it is.
Not just your feelings, though they are.
Not just your intentions,
seen in your eyes,
though they are.
Not just what we see,
it's what you really are,
though you don't realize it.
You owe it to us, to love yourself.

You are not alone.
We love you.
Though you deserve more.

Poem: For You

I want you so bad tonight, Christian.
I do not know why.
I sing out your name
and dream of you hearing
and coming to spend time with me.
To want you so much
feels to me like a weakness,
a great gaping wound
to inflict.
But never-the-less
I feel my cells crying,
begging and screaming
for you.
The next time I see you
I'll hold you so close
and kiss you until
I am chapped.
For I can't find a way
to ever express
the love that I feel
in my bones.

For you.
For you.
For you.

Story: Multiverse Magician

The boy magician heard about a type of magick called "Tesseract Magick," the point of which rested in the beleif of the Universe actually being a part of a Multi-verse (proven in physics today); an almost infinite number of parallell universes, similar, but not identical to the one we are in.
Rather than causing a change in your own Universe with magick, you use tesseract magick to transfer your awareness into a Universe where the change you desire has already occurred naturally. Intensely private and jelously guarded, the boy-magician finally gained access to this technique.
He was warned by his elder that once learned, the technique could be used ruthelessly by one's own subconscious, so that it was not uncommon to switch universes while dreaming, only to wake up in a new one. The main problem this causes has to do with the past things in similar universes. Sometimes books were never written or song lyrics change. It's easy to go crazy in a life where the past is changing and dynamic, static only to others.

As a man many years later he was still switching universes unintentionally, usually unnoticed by him. A driven traveller of parallel realities, at the mercy of his subconscious, never to rest in a place where the past stays the same again...

Poem: Another Day (Part 4?)

Evening finally comes,
turning to night far too fast
for my liking.
Another day of discomfort;
hot, sweaty, hungry, lonely.
A friend from college e-mailed me;
turning my day depressed.
Thinking of others
and the opportunities
they are given,
the joys they find in living,
the love they have
and share with others.
Never ceases to make me feel horrible
and sorry for myself.

Because my life is not theirs.
My life is not even remotely like theirs,
never has been, probably never will be.
It seems like all my mother really wanted
was to be "normal."
This is why she took the abuse from Dad.
Fuck it.
I'm too sad to go on writing
this same old shit.
My parents are fucked-up.
I'm fucked-up.
The whole world is fucked-up.
Nothing I can do to change any of these things.

I write because
I don't have many other outlets
for my emotions.
Maybe a Neutron Bomb...

Poem: Another Day (part 3?)

Another day
and for some reason
I hurt a little less today.
Maybe just time,
maybe better sleep.

I'm still thinking about her,
of course,
but it doesn't...
seem so painful.
It just is.

She is there.

I am here.

List: Things I Learned as an Employee

1) There are four basic types of co-workers:
a) Those who feel threatened by you for no reason and who routinely try to undermine, attack, and blame you.
b) Those who are your friends. They cover for you, conspire with you, and provide the only impetus to actually staying working as well as the only joy during working hours.
c) Those you depend on for parts of your job who do miserable excuses for work, constantly avoiding you, loathing you, and making your working life even more difficult due to their ineptness.
d) Those you don't even know who spy on you, listen to your calls, and gossip about you crassly to all who will participate in social crusifixions.

2) Promises from managers for raises or vacation are lies unless you have it in writing.

3) All companies contain graft.

4) Christians who hire homeless people to work for less than minimum wage are everywhere and not as charitable as they think they are.

5) If you know enough about how a company functions, in great technichal detail, the company will pay you well to "leave the company on good terms." This means not hacking into their network and destroying them.

6) Working 25% of the week, to pay for an apartment, cable, water, electricity, and internet I use 40% of the week when 33 1/3% of that time is spent sleeping - is unfulfilling at best, crazy at worst.

7) My managers are always moer satisfied with my work when I am high or drunk.

8) Mexican are the hardest workers I've ever seen.

9) Companies do not care for the worker, their health, or their life, no matter how much they pretend to.

10) In sales, who you know is everything. Your social life and work life are indistringuishable. Ew.

11) Drug tests are not only demeaning and insulting, but unreliable and almost completely innefective.

12) You get paid lots more and get more access to very expensive technichal equipment you would never in a million years get to touch, if you work as a Scab during a strike.

13) Never screw over a Temp agency. Their shitlist is long, never expires, and is shared with every other temp agency in existence.

14) Stealing items from work, even petty cash, laptops, and other pricey items, is almost always untraceable and profitable. If the company is large enough you will find a ring of people already engaged in this.

15) If the company you worked for goes out of business, your references are fucked.

16) It looks better on a resume to have 5 years straight at one company, than 5 different companies.

17) Getting an interiew with someone who has hireing power is the hardest part of getting a job. Even if your resume is shit; if you can impress this person, you have got the job.

18) All jobs are nothing like the hob description. All workers are nothing like thier resumes. This mutual lieing is a strange American cultural dance, the successful navigating of which results in a place in the corporate secret society zaibatsu.

19) If the company is large enough to have "corporate" and "local" devisions, be very wary not to get caught between company in-fighting and power-playing over project ownership. When approached abuot joint ventures bey either side, insist on a joint meeting. Cover your ass.

20) Physical labor can be some of the most satisfying of working situation, but if an accident occurs which leaves you unable to do labor, well, your career is over.

21) With the right contacts, training, education, time, and assistance, it is possible to live iff if student, science, non profit, and/or art foundation grants for many years

22) Managers do not understand what their technicians and/or System Administrators are saying, but they make decisions anyways.

23) The most powerful people in any major company are the Systems Administrators and the Secretaries.

24) You never know how good a job is until you have a worse one.

25) Computer skills, if not continually updated, soon become worthless.

26) Temp agencies are a great way to get into major companies for the purpose of corporate espionage.

27) I don't like working most jobs.

Poem: One-Step

Just one step ahead.
Always.
Just
one
step.
I lose all my clothes in a fire.
But I have a laundromat credit card with $18.40 on it.
So my first night in my new home
I pick a bunch of clothes from the trash
and wash them with my laundry credit.
Which was a good thing
because the next day was freezing cold.
So I wore all those clothes.
I took my foodstamps and bought
a small stock of backup food.
Which turned out to be smart
becaue the next day
I loaned my card to Mama-San
and she lost it for a day,
so I still had food.

Don't you see?
It just goes on and on like this.
I'm always just one step away
from the jaws of destruction.
But there is always one action,
one choice, one solution,
which will save me.
How do I know which one?
I don't.
That's my life, too, in short.
Moving blindly forward,

trusting
my instinct indistinct,
my unreasonable reason,
which never fails me,
never fails to fail me.
My failure is my success.
My successes are forgotten.
Let's all dance
to the fire of destruction.
Dance while nothingness burns.

Poem: Your Head

What if I told you that
all bad decisions, bad thinking,
bad feelings, and bad luck,
came from
foreign sentient entities
invading your head?

What if I told you
that you
could stop 90% of bad things,
from happening to you,
by washing your head
in cool, clean, clear,
water
every morning
and Blessing your own head
with honest intentions and a pure heart?

Assuming you beleived me,
and understood what I said.
Assuming you tried this exercise
and found to your satisfaction
that it seemed to work;
That every day you blessed your head
with cold water in the morning
was a day where you made better decisions
and had better luck
than days when you didn't.

Assuming these things for granted,
would you go on and continue?
Continue to bless your head
every morning?
Knowing what you've learned
through experience,
knowing what I've told you from mine?

I think not.
We all stop and stammer.
Entropy is our destiny.
Even knowing what is right;
The gears wind down.
We choose to forget.
Memory takes effort
and effort isn't free.

I need to rest,
again,
soon.

Poem: Another Love Poem (I love her)

Gods do I love her!
Remembering now what
that word means.
To be with, to touch,
to hold, to hear.
To hold her,
is a feeling unknown.
Lovely; right.
Walking down the street
thinking of her
and it's enough,
to feel right.
Correct.
Suddenly, every wrong thing,
in a world of bad,
is justified.
Because I held her,
last night.
She is the answer
to a question
I can't even ask.

It's sad
that like all things
we must spend time
apart from each other.

Well...
Everything must be paid for,
and the way she feels...
Well...
I'll be paying for a long time.
And she's worth every cent.

I love her.

Thoughts: Magick

Believing in Magick is not a religion in itself, but a part of most of them. It's a beleif about how the Universe works, not why it works that way.

Jesus Christ apparently beleived in it. As did the disciples, as did Moses and Mohammed and all the rest of the major prophets of earth. Simon the Magus and the Witch of Endor, The Catholic Excorcists, Joseph and the prophetic dreams of the Pharoah of Egypt. The list and historical refference goes on and on. Amazingly, even though people swear allegience to their faiths, they seem to ignore the fact that thier faith preaches the existance of magick and magick practicioners.

It's beleif is everywhere amoung us, from superstitions to children's rhymes to lovers giving each other peices of their hair. At the sam time that it is everywhere amoung us, it somehow remains hidden, Occult even. Like the bookstore you just don't notice and never go into or the $20.00 bill you find in the gutter. but no one else does.

Poem: Friend/Lover/Goddess

Gods, how I love her!
That every thought
and every breath
speaks more to each other
than words could ever aspire.

That once the sex
has been forgotten,
lost to calm, petting, embrace.
It appears like Magick;
powerful and unbidden.

The sexiest woman in the world,
a brush of her thigh,
whiff of her wet vagina and armpits.
Moments ago,
a mere human,
made for joking,
and light pedestrian patter.
Cuddles and tea
with warm affirming gestures of comfort.

Gone in an instant!

So that I hear her ragged breathing,
restraining her lust palpably,
her hands now stroking,
with fire-flame intentions,
when once were just holding,
and cautioning me to stop.

The change is not subtle.
Having just been spanked,
for demanding too much,
I'm leary
and weary
and scared.

The Sex-Goddess before me,
she gives me no choice,
no exit,
nothing,
by which ,
I compare!
How lucky I am!
I'd better just obey
And give to her
what'oer she dare asks.

As the smallest of moths,
to a very great flame,
I gave her all that I could spare.
An energy which could inhabit her being,
no way I could ever compare.

To feel that again,
I never supposed,
would be a gift given to me.
So now that I've touched it
on her farthest edge;
I recall
what it means
to be free.

So back to my task;
Being worthy of her,
a discipline growing each day.
And I pray toward the future
one far-coming-day,
when I'll be fit to give her my all!

That night-shineing day
when our powers will equal
and together
as lovers
we'll fall.

Uniting the deepest
of male and female;
The Yin and the Yang
of our souls.
Uniting our beings
from the root of our Chakras,
a marriage
so maintained
in our souls.

Poem: Prayer of Why Not

So much time
spent in pain
and discomfort.
Is it any wonder
I spend so much energy on
diversions.
Carefully taining my mind
away from the present,
by booze or books or broads.
Is that really so bad?
Is it better that I should
suffer always,
never forgetting sor a second
my pain
and my condition
in life.

Fie!
Fie I say!
A pox on all doubters!
To hell with Thee and cheers!
I deserve whatever
pleasure
I can milk from this
ugly place.

Amen.

Thoughts: Routine

It's all about routine. Routine is what a miserable life bareable and sometimes, rarely, enjoyable.

In jail many people would live for their moments on the payphone to loved ones once a week or month. Live for the occasional letter or visit. Used those times to fuel the endless vacant hours between.
I tried this myself, at first, what I found was that the pain of loss and distance which accompanied each contact with the outside world only served to make my time inside worse. It disturbed my routines and distracted me from what was my real and present life: jail. Turning my incarceration into worse.
For the two weeks that it took to get used to the place, could be destroyed with one phonecall to my girlfriend distant. Making my reality needlessly worse.
So I stopped phone calls. Stopped letters. Got into my jail routine. And my time got easier. Time went by faster. I even stopped going out of my cell to yard time, the ever infrequent release out of our cells the guards gave us. Why leave the cell at all? Even the other inmates thought I was crazy, but I didn't mind; I was doing my time and the less I thought about the outside world the happier I was.
Until one day, like they say in the Shawshank Redemption, i was let go and I was so overwhelmed with choices that I even missed the simple routine of jail, just a little...

Now it's 8 years later and I live the routuines of a very poor homeless person. I was in a shelter for 6 months. Many people compared the shelter to jail and some argued how it wasn't. But the routine, the meals, the bed count, the poverty, these things made it exactly like jail; The Routine in short.
Now on the streets I still make my routines. Things you can depend on in an undependable world. Even something as simple as Oatmeal in the morning and Ramen noodles in the evening. These very simple actions can come to be very comforting.
Then I get an e-mail from a friend I went to college with who just got back from field studdies in Tahiti and is e-mailing while drining Champange on a yacht with naked strippers and cocaine. In other words; he's on the outside, he's free and has access to things I can't possibly have. Suddenly my comforting oatmean tastes like shit as I hear about all the exotic food he's been eating. My daily walk through the projects pales in comparrison to his dance with tribal shamen.

So I burrow myself away. Minimize contact. Try to stick to my routine. Fetch firewood. Do the little things that are in my power. And try to forget about the wonderful and interesting and comforting lives everyone else is having. I need to get more water jugs filled again. Got to stand in line at the soup kitchen. They may think I'm an asshole for not contacting them very much and I wouldn't blame them. BUt I think they understand. When your life is as painful, terrifying, limited, lonely, impoverished, gruelling, and other ugly adjectives as mine is... Sometimes the only comfort comes from doing the simple routine you have to do to survive and not think about the rest of the world. Just keep my plow to the field, head down, and march alone...

Poem: Still Thinking

She is right next to me
and she has never been farther away.
Like a game of Solitaire she is playing
and I see a good move,
but I can't tell her,
because it's her game.
I want to abandon myself to love,
trusting it will be OK.
She doesn't.
And because of that
it's pointless for me to try.
She wants to question,
she wants to think.
When I think,
the outcome always leads to division.
Break-Up.
Sepparation.
When I feel,
it always leads to
Unity,
love,
excitement.
I cannot play if she wont.

And she's still thinking...

Poem: Wait

I should never see her again.
I need to see her right now.
I'll only end up hurting her.
I'll only end up hurting myself.
What about what she wants?
She doesn't know what she wants.
So, wait until she knows.
Maybe she will never know.
Wait.
She makes me feel good,
in a world where almost nothing does.
She makes me feel worse,
than almost anything in the world.
I don't have much to give her;
Not security, not stability, not a good role model.
She doesn't seem to have much to give me;
Not her heart, not her body, not her time, not her faith.
I cannot decide for her.
Wait.
Slow as slow can be.

Poems: Affirmations

I'm doing very well,
with what I had to work with.
I'm proud of myself.
No matter how difficult my life has been
I have met my challenges with a
style, grace, and humor
that is truely remarkable.

As a person I am magnetic,
almost universally well-liked.
the number of people who call themselves my friends
is large and varied.

I am a voracious reader,
well versed in classics and contemporary literature.
Published on a number of occasions,
most notably four issues of 2600 magazine,
the internationally renowned Hacker magazine.

I have been and continue to be
sexually desired
by very attractive members of both sexes
and remain content with the
number and quality
of sexual encounters I've had.

Academically I have tried some of my theories
against more experienced Anthropologists
at major Universities and, in my mind,
exited with my theories vindicated and gratified
in many instances as original and even
brilliant examples of comparrisons and etic thinking.

In the working world
I've held several high-placed positions
in technology departments of major corporations,
been entrusted with millions of dollars worth
of equipment and databases,
recieved raises, and generally proven myself
an able, loyal, independant worker.

My studies of religions and consiousness
continue to this day.
Both the contacts I've made
and the experiences I have participated in
regarding Shamanism and Metaphysics
are so rare and so unique
as to have no real frame of reference
or explanation even
for a large segment of society.

I have not been known to spend too much time on revenge,
have refrained from hurting others
to the greatest extext I was able.
Avoided all physical fights
and many verbal ones
to such a degree as to possibly appear cowardly,
fearing wrong action more than no action.

When seeing the lights of my life on this page,
it's easy to see my success.
While, like the stars in the sky,
these lights are mere pin-pricks
in the endless field of Night.

Dark, cold, empty, space.
Infinite in it's vacuum.
Perfect in it's darkness.
Night and Light
They dance to no end.

Poem: Take It Easy

I do not feel so well today,
my stomach slightly ill.
My heads all fuzzy,
from the long sleepless night.
My heart is still hurting
from holding back tears.
The energy to cry is missing,
hiding deep down
with my guilt and shame.
I don't know what I've done to us,
and I'm scared too much to find out.

Going to the library anyways,
all computers are full;
another omen for me to just wait.
Just wait.
Just wait.

I'll try to take it easy today,
be good to myself as much as I can;
there is no one else who will.
Just sit in the shade and
drink lots of water.
Read an escapist book
and pretend
that she loves me.

Poem: Waiting for No One (part 2)

The moon is pretty in the water now
and you are still not here.
It's getting late
and I keep falling asleep,
but I don't want to wake up tommorrow
without you.

Your next letter will tear me apart,
though I wont read it for a week.
Imagining all the terrible things it might say,
during that time.
The candles are fading
and I'm running out of them.

Please let tommorrow be better.
Please let tommorrow be better.

Poem: Waiting for No One (part I)

Half an hour later
and she's still not here.
I mean,
she's not supposed to be here,
she didn't say she'd be here,
but she's still not here.
I keep looking up the road,
expecting to see her,
but I know she isn't coming.

It's the hope that wont die.

Poem: Want Want Want

After dumping me
she asked
"What did you want from me?"

It doesn't really matter,
now,
does it?

But I think about it anyways,
speaking to her in my head:

I wanted just what we had,
or what I thought we had.

I wanted to spend time with you,
like we did.

I wanted to lie in bed with you all day,
like we did.

I wanted to give you an orgasm,
like we did.

I wanted to go places with you,
like we did.

I wanted you to admit that you loved me,
and you did.

I wanted you to understand my problems
and accept me with them,
and you didn't.

I wanted to help heal you of some of your pains,
and I couldn't.

I wanted you to understand that sex could be therapy,
not mere gratification,
so we could heal each other,
and you couldn't.

I wanted us to dedicate ourselves to each other,
to try to stay together forever,
and we didn't.

I wanted you to feel the same,
and you don't.

Poem: A Failure

"Failed," you say?

No.

No, I wouldn't say I've failed.

In fact I have been successful.
Very successful indeed.

Crawling wounded from a
crippling childhood.
Surviving morally intact
through painful drug addiction.
Years of homelessness,
countless life disasters.

To look at me you'd never know it.

Am I in pain?
A great deal, constantly.

Am I depressed?
Almost always, as a rule.

Suicidal?
Indeed. I wont deny it.

But a failure...

No.

No, sir.

Not at all a Failure.

A spectacular Success.
Simply to be here.

And still with the ability to love.

Poem: Sissyphean Rhapsody

Being right
is often very painful
especially in matters of love.

I told her
the very first day
and showed her a map
that I drew.

Espousing the truth;
We can't be together,
no matter
how much
we love.

"I can't come to your house
'cause it'd make me go crazy,"
a fact
I have learned
many times.

"I can't hang
with your friends,
I can't hang
with my own,"
All of this,
she just
brushed aside.

And then every week
it was "come to my house,"
then finally
"come out
with my friends."

So i finally cracked
and agreed
to come over.
Though my nerves
were as thin
as my skin.

But that day it was cursed,
in so many ways,
from my house burning down
to a stump.

And her crazy emotions
upon the full moon
may have come
from the blood
in her cunt.

Or maybe the fact
I'd gone back on my word,
or maybe the fact that she lied.

When saying she understood
what I was saying,
that first day
I told her inside:

"classes are real,
and your from another,
different and richer
than me.
And the only real manner
in which we can act
is chatting
if you buy me tea."

But deep in yuor heart
you love me to death
and wish to make love
all the time.

The crass-mean exterior
which reigns when your home
is nothing but a traumatic lie.
A persona-created
to keep
you from harm.
but I'm not the one
doing
the harming.
As long as you keep up
that bullshit exterior
it's only
your heart
you're disarming.

The lies
that you write
in your letters to me,
disolve like warm butter
whenever you see me.

The months of your hatred,
extinguished like flame.
But I may not be here
to cool them
again.

Remember me well,
whatever you do.
And if you must hate me,
say it's 'cause I wanted to screw you.


Is that so wrong?

RePost: Family Letter (Part 2!)

(The next letter from my family in a thrilling installment!)

The letter was in response to what you wrote on your blog about what you learned as a child. When you was beating up your parents and family with words. But of course you can’t do any wrong and I can’t do any right. I believe that because you keep telling me. As you said in this email it is all my fault. Your mom is the same. It is all my fault. You and I had the same experience but in opposite direction My mother did not want me to be a success and I did. so she tried every thing to cause me to fail in my live by drilling me down with opinions and ridicule and taking over events in my life. Your mother did not want you to be a success either but neither did you so she reinforced your desire buy letting you dig your own hole. The Whole intent from the two women was they wanted to be needed. As long as they could keep there sons at bay they could feel needed. I did not realize the extent damage done until 5 years after grandma died and I abandoned your mother. I am now free from the abuse. I found my self avoiding people who would be an asset and hanging with losers. Avoiding wonderful women who came into my life because I believed I did not deserve them and chasing sluts instead. I know that is true because mom said so. I settled for shitty jobs because I believed I did not have the talent to deserve any thing over the min wage. I had that drilled into my head too. I could talk on and on. I think you see what I am trying to say

Next subject: this year has been a dry one for me I had to drain my retirement saving to pay some bills. The gutter business is dead for now I don’t expect it to pick up for a couple of month. I can use my 400.00. When am I going to get it?

As far as your blog goes I get a little nervous when my computer bogs down when I tried to log in. Knowing you and your hacker skills I don’t want to have my computer probed when I log in. So I don’t. I have a clean and fast machine now and I intend to keep it that way.

This will be the last negative letter you will get from me.
From now on nothing but good news.

Poem: Sex Song

I'm sorry that you don't like sex;
I blame the man who raped you.
For in this world
of constant tears,
I do,
I'm not ashamed to.

Sex is the one thing
that's for free
to make me feel alright.
Keeps me warm
when I am cold
and helps
me brave
the night.

The only thing
I can be given
with no strings
attatched.
The thing I want
to do forever
when I've met
my match.

The way for me
to give one pleasure,
who I love
at heart.
Sex is healing,
sex is calming,
and that's just the start.

I pray that one day
you'll discover
how to feel at home.
In your sweet body,
oh so sexy,
how I'd like to bone.

Poem: Happy Without Me

She was an ordinary girl
in extraordinary disguise.
Her traumas somehow making her
seem different.
Though trying real hard
to pretend to be odd,
her cards were all shown
when dancing with me.
Her constant protestations,
"oh me? I'm not normal,"
fell flat on deaf ears
in the labors of Love.

For every little girl
wants a boy
to show her friends to,
an Alpha of the pack
to be her mate.
young women,
inexperienced,
thinking they can change
the man they love.
Divorcee maidens in middle age,
wondering were it all went wrong,
when the only time they
spoke of their needs
to their lovers
was when they were angry.

In these ways she was very ordinary indeed,
and perhaps we all are.
I warned her I was different,
not ordinary at all
and she said it didn't matter.
I told her what would happen,
why my last lover left.
She said she understood.
Here we are again,
when the realization finally hits her,
what she has done;
Just a I predicted.

Like most ordinary people
she stopped missing me
as son as she stopped crying,
wrote me off as a Fool,
and spent the est of her life
-happy without me.

Poem: Haunted House

Your house is killing you
and I don't know how to stop it.
You must be able to se this,
feel this at some level.
The spirit of
combined trauma
from every bad event,
which ever happened at that house,
Lives.
It lives on pain, sadness, frustration,
and confusion.
The same emotions which gave It
birth, gave It sentience.
They are all It knows
and It trys to generate them
with all who come into it.
But you, Jane.
And your brother, John.
You two are the best
pain generators
the house spirit has ever known
and it does not want to let you go.

When you went to college in San y Sidro
you were very different, Jane.
In your own words,
you were a "better person."
But the closer you cam to Graduation,
to leaving home,
the angrier the house-spirit got.
It did not want to lose it's food.
So you got sicker and "had to"
move back home.
But home just made you worse.

When I visit the spirit can feel
how I hate It,
how I want you to leave.
It knows I'm an actual threat.
Because, unlike others,
I know It is there.
It attacks ne ceaslesly,
every time I step foot
on your property.
Not a second before.
I become overwhelmed with
the negative energy
and instantly become as
sensitive as a microphone.

You act so strangely there.
Unlike when you visit me,
unlike when we go out,
unlike when I used to visit you.
It's like you know on some level
this Vampire is feeding off you
and you are unhappy that
I don't like it too.
As if you, me, and the Vampire,
should be one happy family.
But this is not
what the Vampire wants.
You have chosen it over
all your friends.
It wants only pain.
Since I propose happiness
I am a threat and It must
make me leave
by making me uncomfortable
or by urging you to
make me uncomfortable.
Either way.

I wish I could help you
fight the house.
You deserve a life of Freedom.
Don't put on that make-up.
Don't watch T.V.
Don't give up on life already.
You've chosen the hose spirit over me,
I know.
But I wanted to at least do
the one thing
that no one else has:
Warn You.

Beware that House, Jane.
It's killing you.
Day by fucking day,
inch by fucking inch.
And you will never be better,
so long as you stay
in those walls.

Poem: Life is a Movie

I thought she had heard me
when I explained that I was a bum
and all that being a bum meant.
I thought that,
perhaps,
she loved me anyways
regardless of all the
overwhelming amount of
terms and conditions
it takes to be with
someone like me.
I thought that,
maybe,
she was willing to be with me
because we were made for each other.
I see now
she really didn't hear me at all,
or if she did,
wasn't understanding.
I see now
some of the grand lies
I have been telling myself
for the last few months.
I see now
that to her I was
just a fling
and I was right
before we started:
Classes are real.
The spoiled brats
who read Marx
have no idea how real
class is
until they lose everything
and find themselves jumping
out a window,
to kill themselves,
because the stock market fell
and their class just changed
from "upper" to "lower."

Class is real
and I'm a bum.
She is upper-middle class.
That's all there is to it,
I wish it were deeper,
but life isn't a movie
where love conquers all.

Life is a movie
where the plane crashes
and people start eating each other.

Remember I told you that.

Repost: From My Family

(Repost of e-mail from my Family. Now you know why I am so crazy.)

We all wanted you to have a great life. You had at your disposal anything you wanted to have a great life. All you had to do is corporate. Instead you closed the dark side. Like dressing like an idiot, dropping out of school at 15, Shooting up junk, and ripping off your own family, over and over again. Snap out of it and get off the pity pot, you worked harder than anybody I know to become a homeless loser. You can get off the elevator to hell at any floor.
The first thing you could do is write positive and stories. Like what are the things you did not learn when you where growing up such as Corporation, Team work, respect for others and their property, don’t throw the quit switch when there is a disagreement between you and somebody else. The family spent a hell of a lot of money trying to give you the tools of success so you would not be a burden to us when you became an adult but you kept ripping us off be quitting or skipping classes, When you keep taking people they will quit giving to you, when people invest in your life you owe it to them to do something with what you where given, when you invest in your self don’t waste your time on things that will not bring you success. Your blog is a cool place to vent your anger. But your writing sucks.

you know who wrote this.

Poem: Now, what?

Well, Universe?
What have you now
in mind
for me?
My house was burned down,
but why?
Was it too distactful to me.
did it make me too slothfull?
Was it just an accident,
the moral: Be careful with candles?
What foul being did I offend,
by words or by actions,
to bring down such wrath
upon me?

Yet i am unharmed.
Myself complete.
I imagined staying in that house for years.
I loved it
and gave thanks for it
almost every night
I lay in bed there.
Never expected to have a place like that.
Nor the place I'm in now,
for that matter.
Bad imagination or creative universe.
Either way it speaks volumes for
the originality of life.
And I suppose I could infer,
that the future will most probably be
just as unpredictable,
original,
surprising,
unique,
and maybe, just maybe,
as enjoyable and comfortable,
as that shack was.
My shack.
Half-built, painted, and colauged,
by me.
My shack on the bay.
That burned to the ground.
Tsk. Tsk. Tsk.
It's the first time fire
has touched me directly.

When I was 18
a girl stole our apartment
with all my things in it.
Later it burned in a freak accident.

When I was 20
Mother sold our house
which I was born and raised in
and always promised to me.
Later it burned in a freak accident.

Now when I'm 29,
homeless and living in a wooden shack
it burned in a freak accident.

Maybe it's the Sky-Father calling.
Calling to tell me
his son deserves better
and it will all be better soon.

It certainly seems that
Fire
is usually on my side...

Poem: The Water Bucket

"I miss my water bucket,"
I think,
and my tears begin to pour.
The water bucket is the key that unlocks them,
one day later.
My face feels sticky
and I want to wash it
in my scented water bucket.
But it doesn't exist any more;
It burned with everything else.
There is no water around here,
That is why it was special.
My face will just have to stay sticky,
for now.
I cry and cry and cry.

The water bucket.
Leads to a hundred other
habits and routines
which are now dead.
Like gathering firewood
and washing dishes on my deck.
Dead with my shack.

I still have $18.40 non-refundable
on my laundro-mat credit card.
But no clothes to wash.

I loved that house
and everything I put into it.
It's gone, now.
Really and truelly gone.

Forever.

Poem: George S.

I'm so sorry, dear.
You can't know how badly I feel.
Alone without you tonight
when I could have been with you.
I wish I were dead
and think about suicide again.
I don't know why you couldn't
make me feel loved.
Why you couldn't hold me more
and pet my hair.
Tell me you loved me
and needed me.
Is that so hard?

Gods help me to feel better!
It isn't right for me to bare so much
alone.
I thought she was going to
help me feel better.
How can I be feeling
so much worse?
My fucking house burns down
and the sympathy I get is:

"I was afraid that was going to happen."

Thanks. Thanks, lots.
I told her I might have a fever,
she didn't even feel my head.
I think I deserve to be loved.
Does she just not know how?
Am I just asking too much?

I'll be O.K.
Life moves on an all that.
Think of George Smiley for inspiration.
He loved his wife,
even if the kind of love
she gave back to him
he could not use.
Even though others
made fun of him.

Poem: Growing Colder

All you had to say was:
"Please don't leave.
I want you here.
I love you."
But you didn't say it.
So I left.
Going home to cry myself to sleep.
If I can sleep in that vibrating cement cell.
Why wouldn't you say it?
What is so hard about admitting to me
that you want me near?
I need it.
I needed to hear it.
I need to hear it from you,
the woman I love.

Instead I heard about how little
I meant to you.
How you'd never dream of
living with a man.
What were we talking about?
I was talking about dedicating my life to you...
you said "there is nothing you can do for me."
Dejected I looked back at my feet.
I want to make you so happy!
By God why can't you feel the same?
loseing everything I owned,
not expecting it meant you, too.

Feeling your sadness as I left,
I said you could e-mail to meet me.
A flash of your hate,
the true feeling there,
and you said:
"You can e-mail me."
A dumping if I ever heard one.

Sitting there, with you,
I felt every inch a fool.
Trapped like a friend,
while wishing I was your lover.
Why do you want me to feel so damn bad?
I've warned you and told you and begged you,
but still:
Refusal to lend me your heart.
I know deep inside you are not
a Cold Bitch,
so why do you show me this part?

My life's full of pain,
more than you'll ever know,
and to me Love's the balming which heals.
While you ration love by giving mere drops,
the amount that I need is a meal.

So play little girl,
go and play your raw games.
But come back to me when you're older.
When you're ready to give me
the love I deserve,
I hope that my heart's not grown colder.

Poem: Superfluous

You wont even try
to let me help you.
When you're reeling with pain
expecting me to just watch.
Well I can't and I wont.
I have enough pain in my life
without watching you in yours.
If you wont accept my help,
than I am less than useless
- I'm superfluous.
I'm leaving.
If you ever want me,
you know how to reach me.

Thoughts: Ofo Ashe (The Power of Words)

In more than one tribal society it is considered very bad luck to compliment someone or something. Some tribes take this so far as to practice saying the opposite, such as "What an ugly baby you have," or "your house looks like it may fall down."

I have often noticed the connection between events in my own life and the words which I speak. I even coined the phrase "You can keep it or you can brag about it. Your choice." This refers to the fact that every time I take a lover and brag about uit, the relationship always mysteriously ends soon after (without the lover having knowledge of the bragging).

In thinking about my home recently burning down, I come back to the power of words. Naturally, I had been bragging to others about my neat home recently. Even others who had no home. I should know better than that. I know better than most how much it can hurt to hear others who have more than you bragging about it.

The West African Ifa tradition calls the power fo the word "Ofo Ashe." However they look at the power of words more literally contending that words are litterally spells, or commands to the Universe about how it should act. This functions much like the pop culture phenomena book/movie "The Secret," where what you say is what you get.

My experiences inform me that "The Secret" model of positive word-play is too simplistic to account for the complicated interplay of life's events, when often we get the opposite of what we say or believe. I am convinced beyond a shadow of any doubt of the supreme power of words and speach, but I dismiss the simplistic positive-thinking models and assert that the true mechanisms of action are in fact much more complicated.

Poem: My Life

What is my life?
I guess it is:
Almost 30.
No career.
No degree.
Homeless.
Physically disabled.
Virtually alone.
Unable to work.
Alcoholic.
Cigarrette smoking.
Reading.
Listening to NPR.
Writing.
Walking.
Smoking Pot.
Unable to have a relationship.
Unable to stand the company of most people.
Depressive.
Suicidal.
Handsome.
Prone to panic attacks.
Highly medicated with powerful prescription narcotics.

I do not see a lot of options for my future.
Suicide is my favorite,
but since it has never worked in the past,
I have no reason to believe it will work now.
I'm waiting to get disability money.
Then what?
Go back to school maybe?
Shit. You see?
This is a Problem.

I spend all my time
waiting for life to get better,
but it never does,
it just passes.
Life is now.
If I can't start living
and enjoying myself right now,
then I probably never will.
Even with all the money in the world.
I always remember this on payday
when I have money,
but still feel miserable.

Even though I know this,
enjoying life is
not something I've ever been very good at.

Poem: These Children

No one ever says or does the right things
when I'm sad.
Few have ever really tried, for that matter.
They offer to visit
or tell me to call,
not understanding that
I can do neither.
Their intrusion into my life
just makes things worse for me.

Every time I think of a friend,
with very few exceptions,
my heart starts to hurt
and my eyes fill with tears,
as I think of a person who's loved.
A person with family,
a person with dreams,
a person with possabilities,
a person with health,
a person with friends,
a person with a life.

A person,
in other words,
with a life I'd like to have,
instead of mine.

And it's not fair
that I have to live in so much
pain, despair, and lonliness.
While others get
support, love, and assistance.
While I live a life of constant
discomfort, humiliation, shame, desperation,
and survival.
Others prosper and create,
enjoy and experiment,
live and excell.

That these people come to me
and expect me to...
What?
What the fuck fo these
pampered assholes
want from me?
They don't want to help,
or if they do,
they're fucking incompetant.
I think they want to pretend to help,
to feel even better about themselves.

These Children.
Who can't even conceive the pain I endure.
Stupidly trying to help,
like a little girl
offering a drowning man
her last cookie.
Useless.
It might be flattering,
if the sight of them wasn't worse
than drowning alone.

Every time I am almost at peace
with my life
some lover or "friend"
has to show up to remind me
how much my life sucks
and how much I hate myself.

And every time I think I'm at my lowest,
there is always one mood lower.

Poem: Terrible Couple

We make a terrible couple.
Though we both care for the other.

I need attention
and plenty of reassurence.
You give me little of one
and none of the other.

I try hard to communicate my needs and feelings.
You ignore them all heedlessly.
No matter how many times I repeat them.

You are the center of my Universe.
In yours I'm barely a star.

I'll give you some of the medicine I need.
While you, you'll give me none.

Poem: Farmyard

How many ways can a person be defeated?
Every time I think I know,
I learn another.

What am I doing,
thinking of her?
When my life is this pile
of shit.

The last of my worries
should be some rich broad,
who sheltered,
stays scared,
to commit.

How 'bout my clothing?
What about my days?
When will I eat food again?
My future's non-existant,
my present's not much better.

Like a rooster
I'm chasing
some hen.

Poem: Zoroastrian Afterlife

If I met myself on a bridge,
like the Zoroastrian afterlife,
the first thing I'd think is
how handsome I am.
As I got closer I would next notice
the subtle movements indicative of
great intelligence and
incredible depth of thought.
As I got closer still I would see
my eyes
and know that I was in
deep and lasting pain.
A pain unnoticed and untreated.
I am an actor.
Seeing through the facade that I put on
to cover the great and gaping hole
where a personality should be.
And I would pity myself.
Seeing a man of great burden
and little respite.
The pity would cause me to stumble
upon shaking hands,
and the other me would see
that I have seen his pain
and he would be embarrassed,
stumbling likewise.
We would not know what to do
with each other.
Each pitying the other,
ashamed at the loss of potential,
but knowing the other is no one to judge,
being the same.
Perhaps we would both instantly
fall to tears,
hugging each other,
because no one else understands.
And when we were done hugging,
looking each other in the eye,
we would knowingly nod
and kill each other.
Jumping together off the bridge
down to Hell.

For the Record: An Example of Precognition

For the past two weeks I have been getting visions of a wall with broken peices of mirror glued to it and arranged in patterns. I thought perhaps it was an artistic idea and considered using broken mirror in the collage I had on my wall.
I could not find any mirror and I decided broken mirror was too dangerous a material to work with, so I gave up on the idea. Never-the-less I kept seeing broken-mirror-on-the-wall-visions.

Now I am living in a new squat inside the freeway because a fire burned down my shack, collage and all. I had never been in this space before and had to clean it up quite a bit before I moved in, the same night my place burned down. The walls of my new room are covered with epoxied pieces of broken mirror, arranged in patterns. Exactly what I have been seeing in my imagination for two weeks, in fact. This sort of thing happens to me all the time, but how was I supposed to interpret that vision to mean my house would burn down? Clearly, I couldn't.

My precognative abilities, therefore, seem to function more often in my life as a form of Irony or Joke from Above. Helping me know that I shouldn't worry, because everything that happens to me is unavoidable anyways and completely predestined. I'm not sure this is beneficial to me or my survival. More often than not it leaves me with a stilted Cassandra complex. In summation, precognition is not a desireable trait from a Darwinian perspective, and most often is breeded out I would guess.

Poem: Unrequited

Wanting to spend all my time with her.
Being cavemen would make this quite easy.
Yet being a person of AD 2009 in the US of A
not so easy.

I could work all the time
and see her on the weekends,
the evenings and Hollidays off.
But I'd be so upset
just from being a slave
that my manners would cause me to scoff.

I could give up my pride
and move in with her mother,
though it won't last forever,
we'd have a few months of peace
and time close together,
my Goddess that can't be so bad.

Or you could be a bum
and come out with me
the two of us out on the road.
Though I'm, fond of the thought
there's something which tells me
our amories here would carrode.

So I go with the days
and I sleep in the nights
and I curse the big maker
of love.

For giving me something,
I don't know how to use,
like giving the hand-less,
a glove.

Poem: Visions of Paranoia

Psychic War-Children see everything coming;
but they don't always beleive it.
Visions of my house burning down
for months;
then it happens.
And I thought it was
paranoid fantasy.
Oh well, guess I wasn't meant for home-life.
Now I'm in the freeway,
like an ant or termite.
Cars overhead
speeding past
concrete walls
I feel so safe.
Can I ever sleep
with the cars overhead?
No room for guests,
a bachelor pad for sure.
What about death
from above?

Poem: A Visit With a Lover

Openly wounded
flaying alive
she cannot give you the love
that you need.
Leave her house immediatly!
Run away and live your
miserable life alone.
I have no place here.
Not feeling loved
or cared for at all
I cry in her chair
and hate myself
for being so weak.
Hate myself for being
so tearful.
Hate myself,
for feeling this way again.
Every time I come here
she's taking care of herself
so she doesn't care about me.
I know this about her,
but it bothers me still.
My dreams are shattered.
I cannot visit her here;
she can no longer visit me
in the city.
My tears fall openly down my face
and she does nothing to help.
So I resent her
and hate her
for not helping me now,
when I could use her love the most.
Pulling further away inside myself,
farther away from her,
closer to my pain and sadness.
"Suicide,"
the wind whispers peacefully,
enticingly,
causing me to cry again
at the thought
and how attractive it always is.
she doesn't really love me.
It's not fair to blame someone
for not trying hard enough.
Is it?

Poem: Burning Down the House

My house burned down last night
and I feel like
I should feel worse.
All I have left
is the clothes on my back
and the few things in my bag.
Not much, but enough.

It seems like I should feel worse.

Maybe I'm still in shock.
Or maybe I've just lost everything
so many times
that it fails to shock me
any more.

I'll have to get more socks, soon.
And a few more sets of clothes, somehow.
Figure out how to eat again;
will I still cook out under the stars?
Why not?

My new place is
a two-story climb by rope ladder.
Small cement bunker
hidden inside the freeway
cars overhead.
Not exactly the
cushy visitor pad
I'm used to.
But at least I wasted no time
getting re-settled.
Life must go on.

I always knew it wouldn't last forever.
The good things never do.
Almost half a year there.
Several hundred dollars.
Countless hours of labor.
A home and a hobby
and a work of art.
The best homeless pad I ever had,
burned like so many
other parts of my life.

Less to worry about, now.
No home to stock
and take care of.
No plans for painting
and electricity.
Just me, again.
The Great Big World and I.

For God and Goddess sake,
what do you want from me?!

Poem: I Love You

I love you.
Do I know what that means?
No.
But I love you.
Should I sacrifice everything to be with you?
Should I remake the purpose of my life,
my new goal being: time with you?
You would be worth it.
And, really, you are much more worthy
of my life
than other things towards which I've been committed,
thus far.

I love you.
Though those words have meant
many different things to me,
some of them base and horrible,
I have no better words.

In the paths of time
my lovers have not won out.
I wonder that I'm poison,
like booze or heroin even.
My effect is enjoyed,
my result is destructive,
of course you enjoy me,
darling;
I'm killing you.
Don't you understand that yet?

I love you.
And thinking too much
I think you'd be better
without me.

I love you.
Be with me always
and leave your life behind.

I love you.
Die with me...
and always be together.
Alone at last
I love...
Us.