So it is agreed then

“So it is agreed then”.

Alice looked around, searching for approval. The circle had gnashed their teeth at each other for some time, and now Alice finally felt she had the foothold to put this issue to rest.

Alice expected affirmative nods, but instead was faced with grim silence and red rimmed eyes. They all knew what had to be done, but none of them could say it out loud. They were all mothers, everyone of them, and they, better than anyone, knew the costs.

It was Alice who had originally proposed the idea to the group. Times were scarce, and life wasn’t getting any easier on their account. They would all have to make it happen. In secret. Their power was in secrecy, and they all knew it; it lay in the mysterious unknown, the ultimate unknown, that of beginnings and creation, creation and life, life and consciousness, things not easily trifled with.

Alice produced a knife from her garments, and with a savage twist cut her own hand, allowing the blood to drip into the metal bowl in front of her. She passed the knife to her left, and in turn each of the women did the same. So it was decided, a pact of blood, a promise of unspeakable things, necessary things,  a reminder of sacrifice.

For they also knew the costs of war, the price of rape, and the murky depths that follow naturally from the degradation of the human soul. They knew the great evil that lays dormant in these spaces from birth in the hearts of men, the sound and the fury of prideful sin. They knew it just as well as they knew their fathers, their husbands, their sons.

And so they would lay their sons to rest, born but not for life, a dark damp secret.  They could protect the core, rebuild, but first everything had to change.

Each women left the circle feeling uneasy and hollow.

Teachers and Books

Teachers and Books

``I never let schooling interfere with my education``- Mark Twain

I would love to go to class more, I really would, but I can’t shake this strange feeling that I’m surrounded by zombie babies.

My Professor is prone to keen prattle, accentualized by overzealous hand gestures, dripping with a sincere desire to show conviction and instill passion. She means well, and I’m sure she is just as frustrated as I am that this class has taken the turn that it has.

They are all hanging off the teet like parasitical parrots, and their minds have been gutted by God knows what type of 'opium of the people' their will has succumbed too. I wish I was older, so that I could approach these types of thoughts with more humour and patience, but I fear that cynicism is a young man`s game.

Hemingway told me once in The Radio, The Nun, and the Gambler that bread was the opium of the people, but I think he was drunk

A group of girls in front of me spend their time taking panicked  notes-  e-mailing professors with paranoid insecurities-  checking their Facebook with mounting desperation and need. Them, all these people, care so much about succeeding and care so little about learning, it makes me feel cheated.

They might be smarter than me, God knows they get the grades, but they are not here to learn, they are here to be told what to do, how to write, what to think, and how to say it.

Mark Twain said everything I`m feeling in one sentence, but I forget the exact quote. Damn it all.

People really don`t like it when you say this kind of stuff to them, it screws with their gears, grinding the clockwork to a halt for just a little too long, and even when it speeds back up everyone is left with goosebumps. I swear to you, these people always know the time. I bet they are always going somewhere, and I can see how it would be comforting, to know the time.

The Italians have an expression for what I`m getting at- Il belle far niente, meaning `the beauty of doing nothing`. Everyone is so worked up all the time, it`s a wonder anyone accomplishes anything at all. It`s a wonder they`ve dodged a heart-attack.

Sociology students who sit in the front row, in my opinion, are missing the point. How in the hell is one supposed to observe a damn thing from the front row?

The term zombie babies might seem silly to you at first, but I think its apt; doddering hunks of meat, neither ever fully alive or dead, yet yearning for attention and confirmation and handling. Play nice Dick. Play nice Jane. That’s a good baby, now let go of my ankle.

They would be more dangerous if they had teethed yet.

I don't care to drink it

The touch screen freaks are taking it to the streets, a babbling crew of text-savvy nimcompoops. The worlds’ awash with modern women who coo at the E! talk news (news they say, I swear to you they say this). Texting, twittering, tablets, and tabloids have spoiled the tea, and I don’t care to drink it, not one bit, not without something heavy and burning to soothe my frayed and frantic nerves. Perhaps I am to be discarded by the fresh faced fan-clubs, death by inglorious funeral pyre (if the can ever ignite the fire). It’s the goddamn proles, the basement mould, the pampered fold. Enlightenment means nothing if all we do is stuff our needy faces’ with entertaining fuck puppets to jerk and dangle, crash and burn, , marry and divorce, whatever.

I would trade them all for a bucket of ice and a hairdryer, I swear I would, if only I had a glass that wasn’t dirty.

I don’t blame the painted fools, the big screen tools, the demented ghouls; why teach a man to fish if instead you can get him to sell his fish and buy your greasy gear. The greasy gear that fulfills the fear that maybe we never have enough in the eyes of our peers. We all need to look up to something, something larger and bigger and brighter than ourselves, lest we ever actually have to be O.K. with what we are. The horror, the horror.

I’m sick, sick and sorry, the sorriest son of a bitch there ever was, if there ever was. Shit.

A Death Refusal

The glinting shadow winked at the brazen pearly gate,

a flippant reply to a not-so-friendly jest.

“Are you kidding me, I was BORN to be free!

 I have yet to complete my fate!”

The doors creaked open

with a heavy-laden groan

That speaks of old wood

And deep-rooted men

A bright ray shone through the cracks of the door

Blinding and fierce, a force of its own

It is so sure and so certain

Like a lighthouse, or a siren

The glinting shadow winked once more

and kept both eyes shut for good,

squeezing them shut with the vigor of a child.

It fluttered like a sheet in the wind

whipping to and fro-

The glinting shadow turned its back

To breathe the frigid air

It plunged back into the atmosphere

To return unto its lair

A shallow breathe escapes from a sick man’s lips

There is a rattle in his chest

I do believe he’s found his way

To those who love him best

First year philosophy blues

“Keep your options open” rings out the hollow chamber “You are special”.

“But there are so many doors” you plead “behind which one lays happiness?”

Only a grimaced silence answers, and your bones grow weary and surly and frustrated. What happens, you ask yourself, when you cannot decide behind which handle lays what has been described to you as ‘happiness’, and you wait and ponder and hope, only to come to the conclusion that no, happiness was never an option at all?

I can tell you what happens.

Permit me to answer this question with another: what happens when things cease to matter at all, and all the silver arches and stone gargoyles from your dreams (life?) turn to mud, and are swept away by the relentless tide that comes with the moon? That moon that sheds its luminous glow, that casts flickering shadows on the cold wet sand, the sand that stretches for eternity beneath our trembling and apprehensive feet?

Plato was wrong; logic and rationality is not the sun, but rather the moon. To those whose eyes have been shrouded by the cynicism that accompanies rational knowledge (or more so a thorough understanding of our lack thereof), the moon would be more comparable, hanging low and fat off the branch of a tall apple tree, the fruits of knowledge awash in the poisonous, sterile glow.

And then the doors start to peel off in front of you, the plaster fails, and the big picture starts to come down, firstly at the edges, and lastly in a heap. Behind all those doors that used to be in front of you lays an old projector and a massive screen. Project yourself, it whines and splutters, because that is all that is real. There is nothing you perceive or think or know or love or feel that is not just you feeding a reel or writing a script or playing make believe.

But to all of you who find this paralyzing, who find it binding and suffocating, to those who look past the painted veil and see absolutely nothing, well join the club and get over it already.

It’s just first year philosophy blues.

A Tribute to Molloy

Outside it is raining, and the cold drops hit the pavement hard. The road seems to funnel ahead of me and stretch for miles and miles, awash in the golden orange glow of the streetlights. I cannot see if there is anyone else around. I am Jesus, I think, I can run on water. That is how fast it feels like I’m running. I have to stop to breath. It feels like my heart is trying to claw its way out of my throat, and I gag. Heaved over, I look into a large puddle formed in a crater on the road. I imagine what my reflection would look like, swimming in the murky puddle, rain droplets breaking the image into a million tiny jigsaw puzzle pieces of myself. But I see nothing. I feel a scorching burn on the back of my neck. I have been standing too close. I run, trying to escape its sweltering heat, but the rays of the streetlights chase me down the street, painting my dark shadow ahead of me. I want to dive into it, to escape the light, the heat, and to be swallowed up by the darkness of my shadow and the wetness of the asphalt. But down there, stuck in the asphalt, even if no one could see me, they would still walk all over me with their shoes and their boots and their heels. Not that it matters, but my shoes’ souls have almost completely separated themselves from the boot of my shoe, hanging on only by a flap that made a loud clapping sound when I run. I haven’t removed them from my feet in ages, not since I had first tied them on. A strong, sturdy knot for a good pair of shoes. My feet are soaked, and the squishing noise of each footstep makes me think I’m sinking in a bog, being dragged down by a slow, bubbling quicksand. The faster I run, the less contact my feet will have with the ground, so I pick up my pace, trying to run only on the very tip of my toes. I’m leaning so far forward that I begin to spiral down like an airplane, nose first. I wonder if I crashed and got lost if anyone would be able to find me before I became an outline of chalk.