sometimes we’d go off on these mad riffs of misadventure and knowledge because, well sometimes you just need to unknow, you know, you need to figure out what you don’t know and that can be anything, like music or art or how a dishwasher works or what happens when you fuck sideways with a gag in your mouth, you just gotta know what you don’t know and it can go on for hours or days and nights, as long as it doesn’t go on for weeks because then you’re really fucking yourself up, you know, you’re completely lost, you don’t know not one fucking thing worth knowing because you don’t know everything, how can you know what you know without knowing what you don’t know, and you see, if it goes on like this for too long you just go ape shit, you just go fucking wild or catatonic or throw up because at some point you gotta know something, you gotta know which way is up at least, you gotta know your fucking name.

and i beget thee
everything you have
forgotten, every dream
you blew away, every sorrow
you made, until you are
as the dust and the ash and the cinder
left in the wake of a once great
but extinguished flame

scrape, he scrapes. he sits in his chair and scrapes one nail along the arm. the arm of the chair, wood shavings on his thigh, on the floor. everyone once in awhile, he gets his bearings, grips his hands, pushes off and up. he steadies himself, shuffles about. he makes it to the bathroom, the faucet leaks, a trace of rust circles the drain. he pisses, it hurts, he shakes it at the end.
we all shake at the end. we all grimace and bite the insides of our mouths. he still has good molars back there, where he chews it up and swallows because there isn’t enough spit left.