Tricks of the trade, tricks of the slave. We own you. Cherish you. Lavish you. We fill you up. We fill you out. To the brim. We are the rim of your consciousness. We butter you up and make you slick for the world. They won’t get a handle on you. Let them try. They’ll never figure you out.
Category Archives: words
Waking up
Waking up with a tune in my head I don’t want to hear anymore, dry cough and the shiver of a dying winter bullying its way through the house. This house, our house, will we keep it in the end? Plans to ditch the 401k for now, give yourself that raise only because we have to dig ourselves out of this somehow. After all, we weren’t planning on retiring in our forties now were we?
One last
One more for the road, for old time’s sake, one more to close out the day. Something that woody allen said about philip glass: you can tell him you don’t like it and he says ok and will just throw it away. And you like that don’t you, the idea of prolificness, the idea that you have this ability to riff off of anything, that you can spin any mad set of words out of nothing and keep doing it for days.
Well obviously this will be a test of that.
Each time
Each time you come out here, he said, you are literally sucking your life away.
Yes, yes, I said, I am and all that. Look, I continued, does it matter? The quality of life is getting better everyday. Even if I have less life to live, the life I’m living gets better every moment.
But, he interjected, if that’s the case wouldn’t you want to live longer since the longer you live there’ll be more to enjoy?
No, I replied, at some point it’s just nurses and dribble on your chin. Who needs a healthy pair of lungs for that?
Cigarette burns
With cigarette burns up and down her sleeves I watch her tell me she cannot wash them away. As hard as she tries she cannot despite the scalding water and the countless bars of soup. I run myself ragged to hide them, but they keep coming back, I’d unfurl my skin to keep her pristine for once.
All these
All these things become merciless, a beating to a wake, her hand on the wheel, a fire hydrant exhausted before a blaze. I hold myself together with stems and twigs and patches of bark chewed over. A spindle of wire for twine taut over and under and over again between tooth and gum and ankle and wrist. I would prefer origami if my body wasn’t so coarse.
test
we are testing,
testing the valves, the values, are you sure enough, have you paid the fare,
should you be here?
ground etch
I wear this tattoo for all the right reasons, that there is ground inwhich I cling to, there is something I stand on, there is a light at the end of this tunnel.
love of a girl
He fills it up with the love of a girl, renewed, skinned knee, wasn’t she so pretty, almost in pigtails but the skirt was filled out too well, a women in sheep’s clothing, vicious bite, he enjoyed it, the deception, he would have to admit it, the plethora of scars were proof, even when he walked away, beaten and bruised, he thought of her tenderly, a newly fashiond scab to be picked and revealed, renewed wound for the road ahead.
After The Rain, con’t
Mel opens the door, umbrella stupidily still in his grip. It was a habit that annoyed her, carrying it to the mud room before the back porch. The irony was of course that when they bought the house she insisted on the laundry room that was originally there be converted into one. “Just imagine,” she would argue, “the children dropping off their golashes and raincoats there and their soft socked feet prisitne while they scattered about.” Slowly he descended the staircase.
Where were the children?