This morning I'm thinking about hiding. I did it so well in a dry and distant landlocked city. One would think that a land devoid of hills would have slim selection of places to conceal your conscious corpse but one with such a thought would prove herself quite unimaginative. Hide in a townhouse in a row of townhouses on a block of rows of townhouses filled with displaced Newfoundlanders and Asian pushers. They teach us to cut lines, we teach them to gut trout.
When that charming scene loses its taste, dress pretty and hide in retail. You are now faceless, voiceless marketing medium in Boss. Invisible pusher thanks to tips from Ling.
What I may miss the most is hiding behind three-dollar pints in a crowd of the brooding and jovial. There's a man on stage with a car outside full of...supercans, I think. I can't be sure. I'm distracted by that lady who's at least cute in the dark (never seen her in the light). Not that I'm eavesdropping, but how many times DOES she have to tell him she's gay?
It's also quite easy to hide on stage. Take up your lute or lyre and take position behind lanky singers baring souls with bloody eyes ever closed. From here the only eyes that can slip past that scarecrow shield belong to that mischievous-looking redhead with the Keith's. As long as her xray eyes cut through that ID card in my back pocket she'll be just fine. And so will I.
Anonymity would remain forever unchallenged were it not for that potheaded Frenchman in the Kashtin tshirt.
He demands a solo.
So much for hiding.

I thought I saw something move. Still far too dark to know for sure if what passed through my eyes had any hold in the space around me. Through year after tired year I've watch my mind conspire against me with nearly every sense I have but this looked different. Past the poisoned oasis of malfocused eyes there's a tiny drip of color. Neither bleeding nor fading it seems to be tracing the outline of a door. Still so early, far too dark.

And if this is illusion it tastes sweeter than most. My will is better killed by hope than beauty.

Very late, very tired, very far from sleep.
It's just one of those nights you want to curl up with a warm body and wait.
Wrap your arms a little tighter, rest your head in the curve of her neck, and let the sound of her breath sweep you off into dreams.

Maybe soon.
Before I'm too old.

And now I'm off to the Catholic basilica to play third rate worship music for thousands of young folk all in the name of staying away from those nasty drugs. My friend Josh, the singing ex cokehead, will be telling us all about how he cleaned up his nose. Then we'll be listening to, world-famous former Puerto Rican badass, Nicky Cruiz talk about how he stopped being a badass. Josh could have been on the PGA tour and Nicky was once portrayed by former CHIPS star Eric Estrada in a movie also starring Pat Boone. And this is pretty close to a normal day for me.

welcome to my world:
where the neon sky looks like it might be fur-bearing

Welcome to the wall.
I don't know if I am to walk through it or slam my face against it.
But on I walk...

generalizations


Whenever I walk through a college campus I get the urge to shave my head and practice Wicca.
Does that make me a lesbian?

"When man talks to God, it's called prayer. When God talks to man, it's called schizophrenia."
-Fox Mulder

What can be said of my character if I can walk blameless in the eyes of those I neither respect, nor trust. Maybe vindication and honor are not so akin. Parallel but very separate.
Maybe time will run the transversal.

My mom never comes here. Doesn't even know this place exists. That being the case, I have prepared the following statement:

Damn.
Damn, damn, hell.
Shit, shit, hell, damn, ass.
Sodomy, sodomy, fellatio, autoeroticasphyxiation.
Penis.
Penis, penis, penis.

(come to think of it, my mother has become rather internet savvy as of late and may very well stumble in here some day. In light of that I feel I should inform you all that a very bad man also has the password for this blog. He's a nasty, wasty, potty-mouth who shakes babies and rapes kittens. Indiscriminately. Sorry mom...I'll see you in church.)

"Maybe I'll just wait until my break to get coffee."

Great idea, Collins.
Smegging brilliant.
Now I've got little red squares on my forehead that bare an uncanny resemblance to the number pad from this keyboard.

Some days I'm just plain silly.

Not to offend any Hindus in the crowd tonight but I have developed a case if Sitar Envy that would have sent Freud screaming into the arms of his loving pharmacist.

Just far enough outside the city for the night to be as dark as a cold night should. What narrow starlight shines uncovers a thick mist rising from the water. The lake, I understand, just needs to know that, through the darkness, a sky still hovers over.
Just dark enough outside the city for my mind to reach back as far as a clear mind should. I remember the night, four years before tonight, when you walked me down that narrow hallway. We stood in front of that door and you asked me to sit. I still felt you standing over me as you turned down the lights. The shape of that door burned in my eyes as they shrank to meet the then unfamiliar darkness.
Just long enough removed from light for the lingering shape of a burning door to have cooled and dimmed beyond recognition. Or location. Like filthy ragwater I wring out fears that I didn't catch you slipping out the way we came in. Or maybe that my ears were too clogged with silence to hear your calls to follow. These are the thoughts far darker than the oblivion you've wrapped me in. All I can do is stretch out my hands through the dark to feel if you still hover over.
Thank you.

liquify me
liquify these walls
let me see them gushing like niagra falls

"You, oh Lord, are a shield about me..."

Met another demon last night. Her name was Alison and she shook me while I slept. She hovered over my dreams. She mocked me while I couldn't move.
In my partially lucid, earlymorning state I can see a little clearer the need to constantly revoke the rights they never really had. I've got half a mind to let her come back tonight so I can scorn her the way she scorned me. But really, what right do I have to torture the fallen host?

Thanks for the warning, love.

***WARNING***

Any coin insistent upon holding position on tracks in proximity
to this sign are in immediate danger of being rendered flat by
oncoming locomotives.
Sheen offers no protective advantage.
Pretty pennies are not exempt.

I seem to have contracted an acute case of homelessness. The condition, my physician informed me, could most likely be attributed to the pre-existing presence of "financial leprosy" somewhere in my social circle. My thoughts turned immediately to my father who has become infamous for flinging finances about like a naughty primate hurling goods of a more deficatory nature. And so, with the infectious culprit fingered, I set out in search of the reasoning behind my glutial displacement...

...and thus, before my very eyes, the epic tale unfolded like the paper crane I used to jot down Martha Stewart's recipe for rosemary duck...

This particular episode of financial leprosy found my father's wallet, worn and weary, spewing funds unto the hardwood floor. The floor, it would seem, was in dire need of a bath in toxic fumes. Legend has it that when the moon is in the Seventh House, Jupiter aligns with Mars, and enough vile chemicals are applied to hard wood, said wood changes color and our house will become some sort of enchanted utopia where no one ages, every day is Christmas Day, and...um...the floor is a darker shade of brown.
The rub in this particular issue is two-fold:
1-so harmful are these chemicals that their fumes will kill a man in his sleep should he prove himself foolish enough to remain in his house during the application
2-the atom-splitters and genome-crackers with whom I live neglected to inform me of the impending arrival of this "hardwood death cloud"

And so I found myself with precious few moments to gather together three days worth of necessities and secure lodging for the duration of this exercise materialistic futility. But really, what small sacrifice it is to live in a magical land where nymphs and pixies dance upon a floor of brown.

Ha ha, God, you're really funny.
I get the point.
Now please cut it out.

It all looks so clear in the separation. When I can feel the divide between spirit and flesh, when I slip away form the beat of my everslowing heart, the echoes fade and again I can hear. Only in that separation of self can I understand the distance of the others. Like wanderers passing in a fog each step away fills the remaining void with twisted vapor. Each steps worth of fog twists their eyes against me. Each word I swing to fan away the cloud is lost in the shuffle of departing feet.

And so at the edge of the fog I stand, blurred and deserted.
Burned and distorted, I find that separation and rise above myself.

The fog, I now see, stands between us not around us. The feet departing, blurring vision, drowning words, are my own. The distance is mine alone. Twisted understanding twists by my motion. I cannot blame them as they blame me, nor can I adopt the blame as my own. For, at the other edge of the fog, behind departing feet, below the separation, beneath the feet of those whose eyes have blurred me, the ground is fast eroding. And in the separation I now understand just why I had to leave.

Oh that there were precious blue pills to make rigid my impotent tongue...

There are many things one can learn from failure. Unfortunately, there are also many instances when failure teaches you naught but the fact that you have learned nothing. I fear this is one of those scenarios.
Succeed and I will have gained a new skill, grown deeper in social adaptability, and become an all-round better human. Fail and I may very well have to adopt drinking alone as my lifelong occupation.
Wish me luck, mom.
We'll cook you up a grandson yet.

...oh...and eyeshadow...you can never wear too much blue eyeshadow

that i might never lose this air of resolution...

It's always the cold nights- the bitter darkness that becomes the corridor between dissonance and sanctuary. I don't know why. Maybe it's the sadistic mercy of providence that knows I need to be numbed. Maybe it's another of the decreasingly subtle ways my mind conspires against me. Maybe just the unfortunate timing of coincidence.

And so, in between, the night cools my mind and the shock heats my need to survive this.

When once again my blood begins to move I find the echoes settling around me as dissonance resolves to unified thought. Stifle restless urge as I begin to sort. What I know. What I wish I knew. What I wish I thought I knew. What needs to be despite arrogance, ignorance, and hope. Resolve to resolve and finish your drink.

Repeat.

Weary of the flipant fridge-buzz that is my audible voice I have decided that mayhaps a new medium is in order.
Safer than an escalator handrail, and nearly as clean, this is what the inside of my head looks like...