28.3.11

Falling Out


I spent a whole day thinking of all the ways
you piss me off. I thought what a perfect waste
of time it was to know you and why would I
let more of me get copied if you deny
that we were friends at all? Disagreements tend
to make us lose our heads, and reveal the ends
we had in mind, but hid in our darkest hearts.
The ends direct your means, and however dark
your aims then so your methods will need to be:
this is the one big kink in duplicity.

15.3.11

An apparently good idea


     "Give me that paint brush," he says, "I need it."
     "I'm using it," his brother says back, not looking up from his tableau.
     "I have to finish coloring in her hair, and I need the fine brush."
     "I'm using it."
     "You're using it to color in the sky. Use a bigger brush. You don't need the smallest brush we have to color in the sky. And anyways, your whole painting is sky, and you're using the big paper. I'm telling mom."
     "You're such a cry-baby. First of all, it's not the sky; it's a neo-constructivist critique of the imaginary of perspective. I'm not just slathering paint all over the goddam place like some wannabe Rothko. Secondly your absurdist portrait of that matronly ideal is such a post-classical joke it's laughing at itself. Just being in the same rec room as you is inhibiting my creative energies," the boy with the small brush says calmly.
     "Your totalitarian sensibilities are trampling on my expressionist freedom. You wouldn't recognize an enlightened study of hyper-modern realia if it was defined for you on urbandictionary and carved into your forehead with shards of reflective glass."
     "Whatever. That didn't even make sense. Just get that trash out of my field of vision before your compositional retardation damages my sensory organs."
     "Mooooommmmm!"
     "Shut your filthy traps; I don't want to hear it," Mom shrieks from her bedroom upstairs.
     "Great, look what you did," he says glibly.
     His brother hisses at him in a vehement whisper, "You're the little bitch who is coloring in the sky with the tiny fucking little brush, when you might just as well dunk the whole sheet of paper into a can of Sherwin-Williams."
     "Your horse-faced abomination is a crime against humanity. Why don't you put it on your blog and let the rubes comment on it? Maybe your stupid fat mom can tell you it's beautiful," his brother retorts in a hushed bark.
     "We have the same mom, shit-for-brains. All I want is the little brush for a few minutes. I don't want to escalate this disagreement into a conflict, or resort to bringing this matter up before governing bodies of limited effectual authority."
     "Me neither, so just cool your jets. The last thing either of us needs is another round of disciplinary sanctions from the imperialist overlords. Furthermore, resorting to conflict is barbaric, and it would be geo-political suicide for you to rely on your limited offensive capabilities."
     "This display is pathetic. You know as well as I that the last time negotiations broke down between us, you were pitilessly savaged and were compelled to acquiesce to humiliating terms of surrender, including the loss of significant material wealth, not to mention the famous 5:4 computer time compromise."
     "'Savaged' is just the word I would have chosen. You attacked me completely unprovoked and without any warning, in brash violation of the standing cease-fire agreement between us, and in defiance of international condemnation. You demonstrated yourself to be a brutish thug with less regard for the rules of war and basic human rights than a pol-pot dictator.
     "The memory of the oppressed is long and filled with bitterness. But let it be known that your aggression has not been forgotten, and that I hold you in no higher regard nor consider you as any less likely to lash out again than a rabid raccoon," he intoned solemnly.
     "What was that? Was that even English?" Maybe I can find an Idiot-English bilingual interpreter to help me understand you."
     "Maybe I can find you a remedial English tutor to help you learn your mother tongue."
     "Shut the fuck up, you fucking retards. Put your shoes on and get in the truck," Mom shouts down the stairwell.
     "Fuck: haircuts."

11.3.11

Hypnos


Sweet dreams, delightful one. You are free to go
wherever. Fancy takes you away. Tonight
  you don't belong to conscious meadows.
    No one will know what it is that you've seen.

Alas not even you understand the sign.
And many say dreams tell us the future, and
  some claim to tell you what they're saying:
    oracle givers will know what they mean.

4.3.11

You are older than you used to be



Stop thinking all those thoughts about life and death;
You'll never find out why you were sent to die
  here all alone. It's pointless; just calm
    down and be blissfully dumb and carefree.

That's better. Breathe in slowly, as if it were
your very last breath. How would you feel about
  that? How would you exhale if you were
    blowing the flame of reality out?