thecrackhaus:

This is part of an ongoing series…To read from the beginning, click here.

The country of Awesome was founded on a random night in 2001 by a bunch of drunken punk rockers when we decided the few acres of land we were occupying for Jackie’s grandparents had attained sovereignty.  We didn’t always call it Awesome, but once we came up with the name, we realized it had been hidden in our collective unconscious since the day Jackie had moved onto the property and had been waiting for the right moment over another game of all-night dominoes to fully realize its namesake.  The Crackhaus was our castle because our nation was an anarchical monarchy (I know, it makes no sense) and more importantly, a hedonistic commune for unshowered musicians.  Like any other commune, we all took turns being kings and queens.  Still, we let Jackie be president (again, I realize our political structure was perhaps faulty, at best) since, after all, her grandparent’s did own our sacred soil.  Our revolution was fueled, like everything else in our lives at the time, by a dustbowl cloud of weed smoke and by a few cases of the freshest Lone Star Tallboys in town.  They tasted so crisp because we purchased them every day at Cheri’s, and we even sold them out a couple of times a week so we were always drinking the brewery’s latest batch on the store’s next re-up.  Cheri’s—just over our Southern border—was a drive-thru beer barn housed in the lot next door to our living quarters.  It would become our supply depot.  The living quarters, which housed quite a few different roommates, and different couch surfers, at different times, Jackie the only constant, was half-way in-between our castle and our supply depot.  Over our northern border was an abandoned house that belonged to a pack of hell hounds.  The owner—Satan’s bride reincarnated in the form of a redneck woman named Rose, with creepy slanted eyebrows—no longer lived there, but dropped by a few times a week to drop a few full bags of dog-food over the loosely constructed chain-link fence of what was once her backyard.  The fence was the only barrier between us and an incestuous and blood-hungry pack of man’s least favorite friends from childhood who grew up to be scary gangsters and broke out of jail a couple of times a week to come visit.  The beasts would travel through our Western pasture, once a five-acre plot of farmland, to terrorize the two dogs, three cats, two chickens, seven rabbits, and potbelly pig—Jackie’s pets and her homage to the farmhouse tradition of her family.  The Eastern border was Shaver Street, a busy highway comprised of a bunch of used car lots and shitty ice houses.  Basically, we were almost alone in the nether region between South Houston and Pasadena, in the asshole of Texas, where the oil refineries made the air smell like one of the farts I would let out after eating half of a greasy and correctly-priced Super Burrito California from Taqueria Arrandas (generally good for two meals on four bucks).   Luckily, our one neighbor was an ally.  Mitch, the mechanic, who lived in a trailer across the street, only requested of us that we be done “practicing” by 11p.m on weeknights.  We followed just that one rule because we didn’t want him to turn on us and bring about any unwanted invasions from enemy forces, the South Houston police department.  Mitch also asked that if we ever needed any car work done to come by and see him.  He said he’d give us a good deal.  Once, when he serviced my 1987 Maroon Buick Park Avenue, and told me to change my oil more often because my engine “sounded like two skeletons fucking in a trash can,” he didn’t realize he was giving me the perfect metaphor to describe what it sounded like inside of my head.

pedanticpersiflage:

Mike Hilbig sits down to write a story about Mike Hilbig writing a story.   Not even one line in, he has already gotten up from the chair twice.  He paces.  This is not unusual when he writes or when he refuses to write with the word processor file open.  With the cursor blinking black on blank white.  He smokes when he’s not pacing, and sometimes he smokes while he’s pacing.  Mike Hilbig smokes an inordinate amount when he’s writing.  He realizes this last sentence might not be completely true since he spends more and more time writing these days.  If he writes more than he does anything else, maybe he smokes an ordinate amount while he’s writing.  Mike Hilbig gets off topic a lot.  He wonders if these sudden leaps are simply a defense mechanism to avoid the task at hand.  He does not know how to write a story about Mike Hilbig.  

Still though, Mike Hilbig had this idea to write a story about Mike Hilbig because, technically, all his stories are about Mike Hilbig.  But he does not want to write a memoir.  Memoirs live in the realm of truth, and when you start with the truth, the reader always looks for the untruth in the truth, and Mike Hilbig would rather people look for the truth in the untruth.  It is much harder to find the truth in the untruth than the untruth in the truth, and Mike Hilbig likes to keep people guessing.  This is why Mike Hilbig finds himself sitting at the computer writing fiction.

Mike Hilbig has been told to write what he knows, and Mike Hilbig sometimes feels like all he really knows is Mike Hilbig, and he doesn’t even really know Mike Hilbig all that well.

This is why it is so hard to write a story about Mike Hilbig, because Mike Hilbig, even after all these years, is still figuring out who he is, and somehow writing about Mike Hilbig is like freezing him in his current state, what his perceptions are now, at this moment, and when the Mike Hilbig in this story is read about, Mike Hilbig fears that the people who read his story about Mike Hilbig will feel that Mike Hilbig was only ever the embodiment of the traits that were in this particular story about Mike Hilbig, but Mike Hilbig’s traits are always changing.

For this reason, Mike Hilbig considered before he sat down here at this desk, in front of this computer, that if he was going to write a story about a writer based on himself, he would name him Matt Bildig, or Mark Hintic, but he has read too much Charles Bukowski to know that this technique simply doesn’t work for maintaining the author’s autonomy.  When Mike Hilbig reads Bukowski, he may read Chinaski on the page, but when he discusses it later with his friends, he always calls Bukowski, the character, and Bukowski, the writer, by the same name.

The same is true of James Joyce and Stephen Dedalus. 

Mike Hilbig figures he’d rather just own the lie.  Even if this means people will say he’s narcissistic.

Mike Hilbig starts, deletes, stops, and then starts to write a line again.  Then, Mike Hilbig reads through the first seven paragraphs again.  This is also why it is so hard to write a story about Mike Hilbig.  Because Mike Hilbig is indecisive, and Mike Hilbig finds it frustrating that the words in his head never match the words on the page.  That his thoughts do not match the record of his thoughts.  For instance, when Mike Hilbig was conceptualizing this story, he thought he might try to add some footnotes* to distinguish between Mike Hilbig, the author whose name appears at the top of the page, Mike Hilbig, the character of Mike Hilbig the author’s story, and Mike Hilbig, the character of Mike Hilbig the character’s story, but he didn’t end up doing that at all.

Mike Hilbig is trying to give his readers more credit. He finds he has a tendency to over-explain.   Perhaps, this is because Mike Hilbig has always thought he was smarter than most people.  Mike Hilbig no longer likes that he thinks that he’s smarter than most people because he’s not sure he really is.  But he still thinks it.  That he’s smarter than most people.  He used to think he was smarter than everyone.  Mike Hilbig wonders if this means he is getting better.

Mike Hilbig just went to the store to get some beer.  It was almost midnight.  He had not started drinking before now.  He wonders if this also means he is getting better.

Now, he is back at the computer still wondering what Mike Hilbig will do next.  He was also just wondering what Mike Hilbig would do next in the car on the way to and from the store.  He had some good ideas, but he can’t remember them now.  More thoughts unrecorded.  He wonders why Mike Hilbig ever decided to try and be a writer.

Mike Hilbig knows that he didn’t really decide to try and be a writer, that there was something else compelling him to be a writer, on an unconscious level.  Mike Hilbig knows that he is good at it, but he is not sure that he is good enough.  Mike Hilbig wants to be remembered a hundred years from now.  He wants to be studied in classrooms.  He wants people to question what he was trying to say.  He hopes they find all the metaphors and connections.  He wants to be remembered as great.

But Mike Hilbig does not feel that he is great because Mike Hilbig is fairly well-read.  And Mike Hilbig has read too much literature that is better than Mike Hilbig’s stories.  But Mike Hilbig does not know if perhaps he is his harshest critic so he hopes that secretly he is still great even if he doesn’t know he is great.  He hopes to someday know that he is great.

Mike Hilbig lights another cigarette. He knows he should quit.  He also knows he will die someday, but he does not want to die of cancer.  Dying of caner would be like suicide, and Mike Hilbig has no interest in committing suicide.  He has had three good friends commit suicide.  One by gun, and two by accidental overdose.  Mike Hilbig saw what their deaths did to their friends and family, and to Mike Hilbig, and he would never want to do that to anyone else.

Mike Hilbig reads through the first seven paragraphs yet again, as well as the next seven, this time.  He is not sure if he is even writing a story anymore.  He should just give up.  He’ll never be great, and even if he is, he’ll never make any money doing this.  Mike Hilbig sometimes feels he became a writer to avoid having a real job, but it is so hard to make money as a writer these days that he fears he will have to get a real job anyways.

Mike Hilbig fears not having money.  Mike Hilbig fears not having money even though he hates the idea of money.  Mike Hilbig opens a desk drawer and looks at his .45 Desert Eagle.  He bought it because he hated guns, and being curious, he wanted to know what it was that gun owners loved so much about their guns.  He picks it up.  It is heavy.  He knows it is heavy, but still it is heavier in his hand than he ever imagines it being, and it surprises him.  Perhaps, this is because of all the action movies and cop shows he’s watched.   The way the heroes whip out their guns with the same sonic boom speed of the end of a whip.  Mike Hilbig could never pull his Desert Eagle out that fast.  It is too heavy.  Mike Hilbig wonders if he could get away with robbery.  He wonders if he could get good at it.

Mike Hilbig has always been a fast learner.  He has never had to try too hard, and yet, this has caused him to try harder than most.  This is why it took him till he was 31 to graduate college because he only recently figured out he needed to put in at least some effort.  Mike Hilbig never had to try to make good grades in high school.  Mike Hilbig still feels that the effort he puts in while better than before is still less than what most people put in.  He makes straight A’s now, but he doesn’t try his hardest.  Mike Hilbig wonders if he could be great if he tried his hardest.

Mike Hilbig thinks again about how unlikely it is that he’ll ever be considered a great writer.  He still wants to be great at something, or at least noticed.  He looks at his Desert Eagle again.  Mike  Hilbig thinks how great robbers are the opposite of great writers.  If you’re a great robber, you never get noticed.  You get famous being a robber by getting caught.  Or at least infamous.  By being bad at it.

Mike Hilbig knows he would be a bad robber.  Mike Hilbig wonders if his desire to be great is really just a desire to be famous, or infamous.  Since he would be such a bad robber, maybe he should go on a spree.  That way he would get caught, and be on T.V.  And be known.

Mike Hilbig has the sudden urge to stop writing and start robbing.  Even if he doesn’t get caught, he can make some money, and Mike Hilbig figures that you can never have enough money, even if you hate it, because money helps you have more time to do other things that might make you great.  Like write.  Mike Hilbig does not have enough time to write.

He gets up from the computer, and puts the gun in the front of his waistline like he sees the gangsters do on television.  He walks out the front door of his apartment not sure what will happen next.

It is late, he walks around the neighborhood not seeing anyone.  He comes up to a Walgreens.  He says to himself, c’mon Mike Hilbig, stay calm, you can do this.  He walks in and waits for the couple purchasing two packs of cigarettes to get their change and leave.  They are slurring their words.  They have been out having fun.  He wishes he could have some fun.  His hands are beginning to shake.  This is not fun.  He hopes he doesn’t blow his dick off when the moment comes.

The couple departs the store, and Mike Hilbig tries to put on his most menacing face as he reaches down underneath his T-Shirt, but Mike Hilbig instead wears his most confused face.  His pants are wet, like he pissed himself, but he did not piss himself.  He feels for the handle of the Desert Eagle.  It still has a bumpy contour, but it is rounder, and slimier than he remembered it being.  He pulls it out to find he is holding a dill pickle.  The juices from it must have caused the wetness in his pants.  He wonders how he could have mistaken a pickle for a gun as he takes a bite from it.  Mike Hilbig likes dill pickles, especially garlic ones.  They are sour and spicy in all the right ways.

Mike Hilbig stares at the clerk who now also has a confused look on her face.  He asks for a pack of Camel Menthols while he removes the pucker from his lips.  He goes back home, and decides that a good story is like a good pickle, a garlic dill pickle, sour and spicy in all the right ways.  

He wonders what is the right way to end a story.

* However, Mike Hilbig knows that everyone who knows him knows that David Foster Wallace is his favorite author, and David Foster Wallace used footnotes regularly, and while Mike Hilbig doesn’t so much have a problem with people knowing that he has been influenced by David Foster Wallace, he doesn’t want people thinking he ripped Wallace off.  (He is already wondering if people think he is ripping off Bukowski, another of his most highly regarded influences, because he is writing a fictionalized character of himself who is only a writer.)  He decides to only include this one footnote (at least, he feels this will be the only one at this point in the story) because it might be sort of necessary.

pedanticpersiflage:

Stephen Calderon:  homey, yo, I just got the news.  too young, damn shame.  RIP.

Sara McElroy:  Johnny, my sweet, sweet Johnny.  I don’t know what to do. I already miss you sooooo sooooo much.  You will always be my heart.  I love you.

Stanley Jenkins:  Dude, just yesterday I was thinking about that time we dodged those fucking security guards to get up to that roof to watch the sunrise walking home through downtown after that all-nighter at Billy’s house, and I was thinking how I needed to call you or something, and then I come on Facebook and I see all these RIP messages, and man, I wish it wasn’t true.  You’ll be missed thoroughly my friend.  FUCK!   This sucks. I love you.

 

It went viral before the police had even finished their report.  When it happened, Sheila hadn’t seen her son John in over a year.  She’d no longer had any other contact with her son except the once-in-a-blue-moon phone call usually to try and get some money from her.  Her only means of keeping tabs on him was to check his Facebook page—the one he wouldn’t even accept her friend request for because he said she didn’t need to see certain things about him, and yet he still didn’t bother to change his privacy settings—and so before it had happened, she began to check his Facebook page on an almost daily basis without his knowledge sensing that something was wrong, and most of the time there was nothing there except the occasional music video by a band he liked or the occasional photo with some sort of stupid quote, usually inappropriate, but one day it was wrong, just like she had imagined in her worst of daydreams, daydreams that kept happening until they became self-fulfilling, and so this is how she found out about his death… 

 

Calvin Peterson:  Just do me a favor and kick in those fucking pearly gates and tell St. Peter I said What up Muthafucka?  And then give him a good word.  Im gonna need it.  Goddamnit Im gonna miss you.

 

…sitting at the computer trying to enjoy her morning cup of coffee, one that had been brewed with perhaps a scoop too many and was bitter despite the extra packet of sugar in the raw. 

She was sitting there at his cheap scratched-up Ikea model black desk on a Tuesday afternoon, at his Macbook—the one she and his father had purchased for him for Christmas three years ago—on his wireless internet, which she was still paying for, in his apartment, which she was also still paying for—an old model that looked like it was built in the 50’s and still had a rusted out dangerous looking gas heater in the wall—an apartment much like the one she lived in when she was his age—exactly where he would be looking at his own Facebook page.  She remembered how it felt two months previous, like a mistake and then a cruel joke and then a mistake again—how she had reread the posts she already had, and then there were new ones popping up every time she clicked refresh…

 

Sylvia Kaplan Hernandez:  I’ve been crying since Lucy called me.  I don’t know what to say.  My thoughts and prayers go out to your family.  This is so sad.  I still can’t believe it.  Like you’re going to call at any minute, and it will all be okay.  I love you so much, and I’ll love you forever.

 

…and then the phone rang, and before the officer on the other end of the line could even finish saying his name, she had burst into tears.

She didn’t know why she kept coming to his apartment during the day after her husband had gone to work—he’d gone back just two weeks after it had happened and there’d been many an argument about it already, about how she needed him, and him telling her that he couldn’t be there for her right now, and he just needed the distraction—and she didn’t know why she kept sitting at that desk five feet from the stained floral print couch he died on, and she didn’t know why she kept rereading his Facebook page…

 

Dylan Orlovsky: What the fuck man?  I told you you needed to chill out.  I really wish you had.  Maybe you were just too real for this world.  Fuck.  I’m gonna miss you dude.  RIP.

 

…as if his ghost were there in that apartment with her, with all his things in the same place he left them—save for the drug paraphernalia that the police removed as part of standard procedure—reading over her shoulder while the both of them searched and searched the short redundant messages asking the same why’s over and over again hoping today would be the day the answers finally came.

to be continued…for part 2, click here.

pedanticpersiflage:

Most of you will think I was crazy, but I’m not.  At least I wouldn’t say so much more than anyone else seeing as how we’re all a part of some bigger unexplainable thing anyways, and any craziness one of us suffers from is a craziness we all suffer from.  And this isn’t some existential bullshit excuse either.  I mean, we are quite literally, each one of us, simply a component part of what scientists refer to as the whole of the universe and what the religious or the spiritual refer to as the omni-presence of God (or the Way, or the Light,  or some other encompassing term that no one really understands), but this thing really isn’t the universe or God at all.  We don’t really have a word in English, or any other human language, to explain it, but it’s true.  The head told me so.

I should probably start with the head.  It’s all a bit murky now as to when he exactly first appeared to me, but I’ll have you know that I remember clearly questioning my own sanity on the first visit, that I actually did pinch myself,—whether this was my own conscious instinct or a common human instinct or simply due to the operant conditioning of cliched television and motion picture cinema I do not know—and that I also remember the fear being almost overwhelmed by the disappointment as I came home from an arduous day of the mental gymnastics it takes to file forms at a law firm for ten straight hours and only wanted to watch the game and escape from the thought circles of said gymnastics that always ended in stumbling dismounts of why, and instead of my high-definition television being there behind the doors of the central cabinet in my cherry-oak entertainment center, there was instead a glowing neon green head with flamingo pink irises and spiked out glittery purple hair.  I also remember that for such a strange sight, his introduction was a rather disappointingly friendly, “Hello Peter, my name is Rex, how are you today?”  I do not, however, remember the particulars of our first conversation on that visit, or any other visit for that matter, or when he started appearing, or how much time had elapsed in between visits or even from the first visit until right now as I sit here and write my last communication in this diffracted human form, but I do now understand that this belief in myself as a diffracted form of some greater whole came to me as a result of these many probably frequent conversations I had with the head over some undisclosed period of time about life, and towards the end here, death.  

I know what the reporters and the politicians will say.  How it was some monstrous act.  How I’d never had any history of violence.  How we need to have a moratorium on gun control and mental health issues in this country.  How despite our incessant need to know why this happened, that my actions simply weren’t that of a rational man and therefore no explanation, and especially this one, could ever suffice.  How we should make it a priority to identify people like myself going through “violent schizophrenic episodes”  so that we may a) prevent them from owning weapons ensuring their safety and the safety of others and b) get them the help they need so that these school shootings will never ever ever happen again.  When they release this document here,—probably labeled as my “suicide note” or “manifesto” or some other otiose journalist terminology—they’ll use it as evidence that the head was some delusional version of the more common “voices” in a person’s head that tell them to kill.  That the head I’m speaking of is only further proof that I was probably suffering from some severe personality disorder.  That what I am about to tell you are merely the insane ramblings of a psychotic person, but again, I must stress to you that I am not crazy.

First off, the head never told me to kill, or at least not that I can remember.  Our conversations were always of the deep and long and winding and illuminating variety that trying to produce some imagined transcript of our exact dialogues or trying to communicate through aphorized summaries of his particular teachings to me that led me to my newfound philosophy of existence would be rather futile and simplified and would not serve me well in trying to get out my message or you well in trying to understand why I did it.  So, again, I cannot say with any accuracy that I can remember anything for sure about what was said.  Even if I could, memory is a rather tricky devil himself and will convince you of all sorts of things that didn’t actually happen while at the same time not bothering to store some of perhaps the most profound segments of one’s human experience.  What I can say with certainty is that these conversations did produce a deep metanoic change in my outlook, and I can try to reproduce what I began to believe as I continued to talk to Rex.

You see, after that initial period of self-induced arm pinching and face-slapping, and stutters of uh, uh, uh in our first few meetings, and after the deep inward searching and questioning as to whether to see someone (i.e. a shrink, or priest, or family member) to see whether or not I was experiencing some variety of hallucinations, and after I decided that this talking would be rather paradoxical as in I didn’t feel crazy, but if I attempted to tell someone that sometimes at night I talk to a glowing green head where my television usually sits, they would surely label me as crazy, and after extreme treatments of drugs and intensive cognitive therapy, if I were not to see the head anymore, would it be the result of these therapies warding him off, or would I truly have been crazy?  I don’t think I would have been able to know either way, and since I had seen and talked with the head with my own eyes and mouth and since I had once even felt the skin on his left cheek and noted how cold it was and realized that this was probably due to the absence of a a body and thus the absence of a heart to pump warm blood through, I had to assume that he was indeed real if only by a deep instinctual knowledge that he was.

Of course, what other kind of knowledge can one have?  We are all collectors of our own information and our own proverbial “bullshit detectors,” and thus all of our truths are only really true if we at a guttural level feel that feeling like we might vomit but know we somehow won’t.  And this is perhaps a prime example of one of those lessons I learned from Rex.  You see, I came to understand Rex to be a projection of that unexplainable phenomenon of not quite universe or God, which I will now merely refer to as the all, but of course this word is also lacking in clarity as to just what Rex was.  And again, I don’t know if Rex referred to himself as the all (or rather that non-verbal communication which would best be denoted as all even if it is limited in scope), or whether I merely gained this knowledge from the contextual clues in our increasingly candid and cavernous conversations.  And whether or not Rex was real as in actually in my living room and actually a representative of the all or merely my own projection of the all existing inside my own head, he was real in the sense that I could really see him and his effect on me was quite pleasurable and eye-opening.  And you see, it was when his eyes were open that I came to realize why the all was projected as a head.  You know how you can always tell if someone is lying in the way a person’s eyes might shift slightly upwards or sideways, or they might blink a time or two too many, and how this realization is not perhaps noticed intently as a shift in the eyes, but you can certainly discern from this action that a person is probably lying, and you know this discernment produced that same guttural stomach punch of truth.  This is why poker players and secret agents always wear sunglasses.  It’s the perfect disguise for a person who spends a good deal of their time bluffing.  But Rex, in our conversations, always maintained this stoic-like concentration of eye-contact never breaking from my gaze except when to direct me to objects around the room, which might strengthen his instructions in example form, and this concentration gave me the nauseous knowledge instead that he was actually being one-hundred percent a parrhresiastes, and he was giving me the real deal ontological knowledge of the universe that I’d spent so many hours in my office wondering about as I alphabetized legal briefs.

And his instructions were never to kill, but merely to find a way to connect back to the all.  You see, another realization I had in talking to Rex was that life was merely a separation from the all.   Essentially, we become humans because we are one of the all’s ways of having an experiential existence.  The all, you see, sometimes gets tired of being so allular so he created us from himself, or herself, or itself, or whatever it actually is when not projected, so that he or she or it or whatever could become particular.  This is necessary for experience since if something could experience everything at the same time, it would also experience nothing in that it would have no opposition to create definition. Therefore, we are experiential illusory beings because we are experiencing those things that the all cannot.  I know this is somewhat confusing, and some of the more philosophically minded of you will point out some logical paradoxes such as if the all can become particular, than he or she or it or whatever will cease to be allular, or that if the all were to create himself or herself or itself or whatever as particular, he or she or it or whatever would make the particular allular and thus not particular at all.  Of course, I can assure you that if you talked to Rex, you would understand that these paradoxes are simply gaps in our language construction as human language also has the distinct characteristic of needing an opposition to create definition, and therefore a quite limited way to even begin to talk about the all.

Of course, I have no better way to do this.  So, I will try my best.  Rex, you see, informed me that there was a particular deeply wrong interpretation and construction of the all taking place at the local Orthodox middle school where the ideology of God was misconstruing the already confounding idea of the all.  That the problems with these improper projections is that when a person returned to the all after death, his or her ideas and beliefs would then become a part of the all itself, and misconceptions over time were making the all more and more a thing not so mysterious and allular but simple and particular and this threatening of the all’s very nature must be dealt with in ways that were perhaps considered extreme to the particulars of the all, but were only aimed with the preservation of the all itself.  So, in short time, when I am walking through the doors of the Annunciation Community Center and School with an arsenal of high-powered semi-automatic assault weapons to return these children to the all before their indoctrination is complete, only know that I am aimed at granting them release from the pain of experience to the neutral light hum of being only a memory, and that the why’s these actions produce in you are only your own projections of the all asking you to come back home.  And, furthermore, please don’t blame Rex or the all.  Know that this was my particular flare of the confounding problem of how to possibly connect to such a confusing entity.

pedanticpersiflage:

A sloppy copy of a copy copped poppies and dropped
over and out like Roger.  That dodger dodged Acme acid
baths like a rabbit.  Like a bad habit always on his shoulder
spitting out static like a rapper, but he didn’t brush it off.  He
mixed it with Morse code, and sent it out on the telegraph.  On
the times past.  He tapped it like a chain against a flag pole, and
tied it off at half-mast.  Like a true patriot, he sacrificed

himself for his country.  You see him hanging there everyday
on your way to work right next to the homeless guy that
always flashes you with his belly.  He holds a sign and 
screams out for end times while he reminds that losers
really are just proof of the competitive nature of life. 

pedanticpersiflage:

I went all the way down the rabbit hole
and found out it wasn’t really a hole
because there wasn’t really a rabbit
to dig it.  No babies to be eaten later
when they turn into competition.
No gladiators fighting lions in coliseums.
No history.   No future.  That’s where

I found my subconscious and stopped being
conscious and conscientious.  It’s hard
to have objections when the courtroom’s
already been burnt down.  Next up
is the library on the other side of town.
I know it well because I did community
service there once, but the community
never did seem to show up.  They were

one step ahead on the escalator.  Still,
I couldn’t catch them because
even though my brain said to treat
the levels like stairs, something in my feet
just held me there like a mob victim
wearing concrete shoes.  Waiting to
go overboard.  Into the ocean where

hopefully a diver will never find me.
I can no longer see the light waves
at the surface. You could say they’re
out of my league like questions about
trees falling in forests.  When no one is

around.  That’s when I’ll probably drown.

pedanticpersiflage:

The blackbirds flew on the red-orange horizon
like cigarette ash carelessly flung into a dead field
during a season of drought.  No doubt
it’s hard to start a fire with an ember,
but with enough air, anything is possible.

We learned how to land on wires without
interrupting the currents, and now nothing
shocks us anymore.  Nothing flows through
our circuits uninvited, and in spite of our condition,
we still play propaganda videos to blank-bored children.

We teach them how to socialize in whispers,
how to live life like the telephone game where rumors
are Greek players adding a chorus to an act.
They wear masks like tragic heroes in a comedy
with no climax or resolution in antiquity.

Post-mortem post-moderns dubbed them
classics, but they were more like Vlasic pickles
blowing away clever smiles with sour whistles.
They were chiseled into the stone on the side
of a mountain by a meteor shower.  Fight the power

like a conspiracy theorist.  We can’t look at
the human spirit, but we bottle up and sell its
counterfeit image.  It was probably just an excuse
to drink up, but a guy with a frazzled haircut got up,
gave a toast, and told us it was all relative like truth.

pedanticpersiflage:

Funny enough, she looked just like Tipper Gore from the PMRC days.  The short blonde bangs worn with the shoulder length hair parted down the middle.  And she was certainly dressed more conservatively than anyone else in the bar with the dress slacks and the top, which could have been shirt or sweater—it was hard to tell in the dim light.  But yeah, she reminded me of a budding politician’s wife.  Those bags were already forming under her eyes from having to care too much about other people’s problems.

“What do you do,” I knew it seemed a bit obvious of an introduction, but I’ve always found those work best.

“Well, if you mean to ask what is my profession honey pie, I suppose I do things a librarian would since I am one,” which seemed odd considering who I later learned her to be, but I don’t know.  I guess it’s sort of like that saying keep your enemies close.

Now, I know what you’re thinking, what’s a guy like me doing hitting on a woman like her? I mean, we were probably somewhat close to the same age.  She might have been a few years older, but nothing too extreme.  Still though, she dressed as if she were twenty years older, and she looked to be drinking an old-fashioned.  I couldn’t quite explain it, but I guess it gets boring hitting on the same type of lush chick every time I go out.  Again, I know I sound obvious, but there really was just something about her.  I had to ask, “So what’s your name sweetheart?”

“Don’t worry about that right now darling.  Why don’t you just purchase me a fresh libation?  Oh barkeep, may I please have another?”

Before I knew it, we were back at my place.  And believe me, if it doesn’t sound like she’s the one-night stand type, well, let me cue you in on a little secret, every woman likes a little controversy every now and again, and well, as I would soon find out, she seemed to like it more than most women.

As I began to pull her sweater-shirt off, I noticed some fuzzy blurry dots coming from underneath her bra.  When I removed it, I literally dropped my jaw.  In the flesh, she had those censor marks like they use on television.  I jumped back.   As weird as it was, it felt like I was witnessing a miracle.  I said the first thing that came to mind, “I don’t think I ever caught your name.”

“Oh [bleep], I guess you were bound to determine my origins sooner or later, but I am the personal embodiment of Censorship.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“Well, darling, this sort of occurrence happens more regularly than you would think.  I’m an agent of the one true God.”

“You gotta be shitting me?” 

“I wish you would watch it with the language, but I guess I just slipped up myself.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. So, what, are you like Jesus or something?”

“Well, no, I’m not like that [bleep], I’m sorry, do excuse me.  What I meant to say is that yes, he is my half-brother.”

“So, what do you want from me?”

“I want to have intercourse with you, what else?”

“But isn’t that like against your law or something?”

“Honey, I couldn’t do my job if I didn’t get to practice a little perverse act manufactured by my own repression every once in a while.”

And so we had sex, but you know that was just as weird as the rest of it.  Even though you could feel her nipples and her wetness beneath her fuzz, it just felt like most of the pleasure had been removed from the act, and despite later going to visit a shrink to try and figure out if I was crazed and experiencing some sort of insane hallucinations, deep down, I knew her story checked out, and undeniably, I came to believe that day.

pedanticpersiflage:

Party patrols roam the wasteland
with t-shirt cannons,
looking to bust the ghosts
of talk show hosts,

most will fail
to perfect dances
on top of dug outs,
back up for mascots,

their wide asses will knock heads
on the way back up
the stadium stairs
where whole stadiums stare

red in their glares,
the hatred of the rival
more vital, than the love
they have for home,

and so the boos roam
in the roars
while the souvenirs soar
and money changes hands

between the peanut man
and the stands,
no matter who wins or loses,
or even how

they played the game.