What The Fuck Do I Call This?
What the fuck do I call this?
If you know where the dream ends, you’re being watched.
If you can find the seams, the stuff you jerk off to that you don’t tell anyone about is being written down by a government agent who is slowly falling in love with you.
You make the nipples of their soul hard enough to cut diamonds.
I clear my throat, “Look. This is bullshit. See, the beginning of wisdom is being able to tell where the dream ends while at higher frequencies. If you can do that, shit will be less scary.”
See. There were moments here. Undeniably. Some of it was bullshit. Maybe most of it was bullshit but some of it was not a dream. Sometimes I heard right. Sometimes I heard just right.
That song I know. That I heard somewhere. One time.
Yo man. I don’t know how I feel about that song thing, man.
This is garbage, isn’t it?
Maybe. There were moments though.
There were moments you thought I kinda had it.
Maybe.
Maybe.
Maybe.
The audacity.
to try to utter the unutterable.
Holy shit, I better stay in my lane, right?
The crowd builds messiahs.
Nobody is insane enough to believe that about themselves unless they are high 24/7.
I don’t gotta worry about that though.
I’m not that good.
This though.
This is courage.
If you tried. Fuck. That’s cheesy. Good night. You know what I’m getting at though, right?
Seriously though. Good night.
More Posts from Mistahsojourner and Others
What it is
All of this arises from a sense of loneliness. That’s what drives this. There are layers to it.
Not a ridiculous number of layers though. I’m a simple guy.
I’m not close with too many people and by many, I mean, like any. That’s not to say that I don’t have my moments. Those moments kinda scare me though so sometimes I need to take a few years to breathe and by breathe I mean, mess up my life and sink into a pit of self-loathing.
I’m questioning the wisdom of doing this but not really. Fuck that. You gotta take risks sometimes.
This is an unremarkable’s man’s inner monologue on a Friday night.
I was about to declare this art but god damn it, that would be cringe-y as fuck. It is art though. It just will never be studied because it’s not that good. It has its moments though. This is all about those moments.
This track always goes right to my heart for some reason.
“The borders should be illegal instead of the people / That were here before the Bible and all of its sequels.”
I suspect that I’m getting better at this. What is this? That would be writing. Pause. Scratch chin. Take sip of water. Get up and close the door. I sit with my feet up on the desk. My keyboard sits in my lap and I type away.
It was one of those angry drives home. It was one of those drives home where I just got murder in my heart. I just got weaponized hate up in me. Anything I might possibly say is gonna be barely coherent. I’m gonna shout. I’m gonna keep shouting til I can’t anymore. I’ll be out of breath and none of it will be cathartic. I won’t feel better. I hate that kinda anger. I’m glad I didn’t do that today. It’s anger at the world and the people who run it. People talk about evil. They talk about people who do monstrous things. They talk about ‘em like they got glowing red eyes and how you can smell sulfur when they walk by. I believe it was Hannah Arendt who talked about the banality of evil. It’s these utterly unremarkable dudes like Scott Pruitt and Jeff Sessions who fuck up the world. They don’t look like monsters but what they do is monstrous. They get to manufacture a hellish reality for millions of people and then they probably go home and watch Blue Bloods or Chicago PD or something and then maybe their wife gives them a half-hearted hand job and then they are back at it the next day. That’s how they do.
It’s good that I’m diligent at putting words to the page almost every single day but maybe I need to strive for more than that. I don’t know what exactly. I think the paragraph above had its moments. I fantasize about poetry and literary journalism.
Making a living distracts me. Takes too much time, ya dig? Shit. That fucking game has us all by the nuts.
I think to myself, “Where the fuck you going with this? Do you just want to stop? Chill the rest of the night?”
I really do.
I will actually.
I get stoned enough, I'm honest. Smart honest. The kinda honest I can live with.
Maybe that's what I tell myself.
This is me writing garbage ain't nobody gonna hold me accountable for.
I don't know how to be. There ain't no fucking manual. Bring me a pizza every once in awhile and I'm good. Pizza and a whiff of sex. I'm good.
Nah. Shit. Maybe I sound like the Internet equivalent of that homeless dude rambling about some shit that makes no sense while he waits for a bus he doesn't have money for. That could be you. That could be me. Maybe your wits and your good looks and your talent and all that shit ain't gonna save you cuz you're just you. Look. I'm just me. It's aight. I love you. Okay. Maybe I won't say that again. Yo. We gotta believe a better world is possible.
Fuck. I'm getting sick of this. 10:29 PM Pacific Standard Time.
I feel lazy.
This is art, yo.
This is sugar.
This is late night truth.
This is finding the one true god again.
This is bullshit but it had its moments.
Should I read this again in the morning?
“it’s the soul that’s erotic.”
— Adélia Prado, from “Dysrhythmia,” The Alphabet in the Park: Selected Poems (Wesleyan, 1990) (via metaphorformetaphor)
Was a good day. It was a day I could half-way breathe. I handled what needed to be handled and then I went home.
The air is hot. I’m just in here with me.
For some reason, I talk a lot at work today. I talk way more than usual. I make people laugh. I get told I’m funny. I get told that I should do stand-up. I confess that in my 20s, I sorta tried that. I told him it didn’t go so well because I half-assed it and I didn’t have a god damn thing to say. He asked me if I think I do now. I said, yeah but I didn’t have anything unique to say.
I didn’t try so hard at stand-up. Maybe it wasn’t for me. I don’t know.
Thing is though, I took some risks in the way that I perform me and someone liked it.
I like that.
That was cool.
This feels cliche because the late comedian Bill Hicks tends to be an influence on insufferable artistically-minded types of a certain age. I meet people and I feel like I can sense people who the man spoke to.
This is one of my favorite bits of Hicks. This spoke to me even when my mind and my world were much smaller.
There is a church in Indiana that put Jesus, Mary and Joseph in detention. This has gotten a lot of love on progressive-ish Twitter.
I get it. I appreciate where that is coming from.
I’m definitely someone who is interested in socially conscious interpretations of religion, particularly Christianity since Christianity had a big part in shaping me coming up in this Empire. I’m not sure about God or the supernatural or the efficacy of prayer or anything like that but I cannot deny that Christianity had an impact on me.
Here’s the thing.
I’ve never known conservative Christians to see the humanity of The Other in Christ. I traveled in those circles. I was in that orbit for a long time and I just ain’t seen it. That just is not something they do.
In fact, the humanity of Christ is a tricky thing. Set aside the humanity of The Other (undocumented, gay, indigenous, lots of other categories). I don’t know that they really see too much humanity in Christ period. He’s this righteous messiah character and not much else from where I find myself standing.
My desire is to become better at writing. Why? My sense is that it could lead me to a more fulfilling life. My standard answer to the question, “Why write?” has been that I find it satisfying but it’s more than that. As a human being, my desire is to lead a fulfilling life. In fact, that might be the thing that I want more than anything you care to name. I don’t think it will lead me to anything like financial security though. Financial security is elusive. There is tension there. This world is a bitch to live in like that. Everything is so god damn expensive. This shimmering dream of a world that might really be a nightmare has us all running ragged for a collection of dead Presidents that is just big enough to make it through another day.
This is gonna sound like bullshit but I also connect my writing to the struggle for justice. Writing is a vehicle for conveying truth. Words can bridge the gap between human beings who are profoundly alienated by the endless chasing of nickels and dimes. People who work jobs that leave them bleary-eyed and bored and angry need to know they aren’t alone. Maybe I can reach out and touch a few who are on the same frequency. Maybe I’m not even qualified to do that but I figure that I’ve got to try. Why the fuck not?
I get the sense that I’ve got to challenge myself. I gotta try and write something that takes some effort. I was thinking an essay of some kind. I’ve got to give it some thought. I don’t know that I can pull it off and maybe I can’t. I might learn something from trying.
If this reads like inspiration porn, I apologize. I hate that shit.
