a bar to hide in a bike to ride north

I will type in red because it looks ashamed, and today is a day for shamefulness, for shy slyhanded lilting, the ease of alt-tab and yes or no.


Need some mood muzak, the focus is inside the slant or nonslant of all these lines. All I want is a bar to hide in a bike to ride north and then relearn regret and disappointing strangers and I would make it all the way there and never show up at your door, you know? 


I am just like that, I guess. I would stop at a park, sit, pretend like I'm writing, or doing something that's not just sitting and being a coward. Being too pussy to be real.


And then I would turn around, and find a gas station, get a diet Dr. Pepper, chug & chuck it, and drive all the way back home. 


And no one would miss me and no one would know and I wouldn't list it as crossed off the list of places to go.

fingertips

Watching the way we pull back makes me ache so much. It's like I'm reaching for you all the time, more than I ever have. You're down in the ends of my fingertips, instead of up in the rest of me. It's as close as we'll get.

No, I think as close as we'll get is a long way behind us now. It's not coming, there won't be anything more than this. And I, I should have left when I said I would. I should have run, because my heart is breaking again. And it wasn't me. I should have disappeared while I was still smoke, not this actual thing you don't want anymore.

I'm all up in fingertips. I've been making things with my hands this week. Writing again, drawing. Playing the piano, trying to play the guitar - realizing I should just give in and play bass. I'll get one of those for Christmas, learn how to play.  The bass player's the one they all make fun of, yeah? Maybe it's a role I've been groomed for. The one I've been practicing all my life.

I'm doing it, living on the edges of myself again. Afraid of what's in here. I haven't unloaded for so long, I think the deluge would drown me, so I'm withholding.

Fingertips on the controller, time again, Halo with other boys. Everything my fingers touch reminds me of you. Makes me miss you more. I use them, and avoid them.

If I touch him, I won't do it with my hands.

It's lunchtime, so I'm purging

I couldn't sleep last night, so I had turned on the radio, trying to find a good station to leave it on for my alarm this morning. There are no good stations. And it's not just in Utah.

Ok, I have a teenage sister and a 20 year-old sister. I have been subject on occasion to spending painful amounts of time with them in assorted automobiles, and numerous times have literally cringed at the music I have been subjected to. My 17 year-old sister was going on and on the other day about how groundbreaking and artistic and creative Lady Gaga is.

I hate Lady Gaga. I think she is none of those things. I think her music is unoriginal, trite, bland, boring and cookie cutter. I think she's a psychotic mix of Michael Jackson, Madonna, Britney Spears and Beyonce. Without Michael Jackson's dance prowess. Without Madonna's ability to break boundaries. Without, well, no - she's got so much of everything wrong with Britney. Without Beyonce's vocal talent.

Gaga's lyrics are boring. Redundant. Brainless. Just because she's weird doesn't make her an artist. It doesn't make her some radical new force in music. It doesn't make her worth listening to.

I could go on and on about how much I hate today's "popular" music. It pisses me off. It makes me loathe my own generation. Synth bass & drum beats don't count as music. And they're in EVERYTHING. They're in the "rock" music, they're in the pop, the rap, the hip hop, they're in the goddamn country music. It all sounds the same.

And this resentment of my generation just grows, this shock and horror at the lack of creativity. This vengeful seething at the institutions that have churned out these tasteless masses who were only ever taught to feel good about themselves, regardless of the fact that they've ever actually done anything.

You got a D on your English paper? That's ok! You're special! You spell "cat" K-A-T-T? You're special, you're unique, you have an interesting way of thinking! It doesn't matter what you do, you're not a failure, because failing is bad, and it makes you feel bad about yourself, and so we'll just pretend that it doesn't exist.

We'll coddle you and shield you and then throw you out into the real world and wonder why we're so shocked that you can't do anything but live in your parents' basement and work a minimum wage entry-level job, even after college. Your boss won't let you re-do the work you turned in? Or let you make up a missed deadline? There's no extra credit that will save your ass from being fired? That means your boss is a jerk. He doesn't know what he's thinking. He has no right to treat you that way. No one can expect you to try.

And this need, this fact of inflated self-esteem, this mega-ego that has been heaped onto and crammed into every kid, this self-righteous expectation of the world to just GIVE you everything, has morphed into this gigantic social trend of pursuing pleasure (or, entertainment - the American version of pleasure) with relentless drive and complete abandon. We go broke over it. We go crazy over it. We fork over billions of billions of dollars for drivel.

And these celebrities, these entertainers, are now coming from the same place we are. They're entitled, they're unoriginal, they're spoiled... they feel like they deserve your money and adulation, even if they don't do anything worth either. And because they've never learned to do anything for themselves, never even learned how to learn, they've never created and failed. They think failure doesn't exist. And because they have no imagination, no need to ever excel , it seems they can only do what every 20-something in America seems to be doing... fallback on the older generation and expect them to save their asses.

That's why every shitty new teenage rock band only seems to do awful covers of songs they don't even understand or appreciate. That's why a show like "Glee" that only does bad covers of old songs is considered "fresh, groundbreaking" new television!

I am pissed off at the people I've grown up with, I'm appalled at the children that are growing in the wake of our preposterous failure of thinking we can't fail, that failing is a bad thing. I am disheartened at the bar of accomplishment, achievement and success that we have collectively, consciously and still obliviously, dropped to the ground and flattened just so every idiot can roll over it with someone behind pushing them.

How low can we go? What's the point of having a life if you don't know how to live, or how to make something out of it?


Jeff Buckley - Grace
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through the fish-eyed lens

nearly, a fishhook bump and it slides away into the dark green water. the flick of your wrist too slow. pull in the empty line.


pull long, the pullapart pieces. pile them, so it half counts. so you can see the picture of what you're missing.


do something you tried. to do something.


try, like chipotle. like the smoke-tingle burn of its scent in your nose and how come everyone loves it but you? you taste weird, maybe. taste different.

different words. you lose like a slimy fish from the wrong hands into the grass. like the long cast of a clear line as it winds the slow circle around and around the wire overhead you weren't watching.  the way everyone else communicates.


feel the snap after desperate tugging.


you won't get back that lure.