Did he do too much acid?
Wow, I’m shocked.
.
That’s the worst drug you can do.
.
Yeah, you know what’s dope,
But you don’t know
Who YOU are.
.
And you probably can’t even
Enjoy your own creations
Because you’re living on
Borrowed time, you’re
A slave to your
Truncated sense of self
Putting it
.
All on the line for the
American GDP after
Assassinations and moon landings.
Over time,
You learn to hone,
You learn to perfect techniques,
And it’s hard not to be ostentatious
When every person lays claim to your identity,
Lays claim to the shape of your psyche.
.
We live in a world that requires money,
And banks are institutions which hold money
And are also for-profit businesses,
Which is certainly a baffling thing to consider.
.
When the bank guy calls me
Trying to sell me a service,
I’m just out of work
On my break.
.
I pick up the phone,
And talk to him roughly in the manner
In which I’d talk to a car mechanic,
Which offends him,
And doesn’t offend car mechanics.
.
I note his disappointed, somewhat deflated
Tone, and I get upset,
So I guess I am an empath after all,
Faced as ever with this boorish
Mountain of alchemical deception.
The blue and off-white yin-yang
Sank slowly to the ground
Amidst a vituperative lack of
Ornament and good will.
.
I waited for 10 seconds or so,
Like a scenester anticipating some sort of culture,
Which admittedly is usually attached to hegemony.
.
The next manifestation of the universe
Was a big, hungry, angry, red fish,
Looking desirously up at the yin-yang
With sharpened, glistening teeth.
.
The universe was always recreating itself,
Always forming into these oblong,
Ludicrous beings with hungry bellies
With sacrifice the only
Asset in our wallets today.
Suicide doors dude
Really makes you realize
How many grease-balls there are
In town
And how the waning days of
July and August
Will always just encompass
Their frustration in their
Name-brand clothing
You could pick apart
Like an antique clock
From the planet Neptune
Oncologists flood the strip malls
And
Your inner mayhem
When that 47-year-old dude
Makes out with that 24-year-old girl
Should be lucrative for them
But it’s appalling how you truncate free love,
It’s white-trash and antiquated
How you reside within these asinine rules to live by,
As yoga pants and warheads
Bulwark our GDP.
When the fashion statement itself
Is the victim of my internal quills,
Consciousness becomes a hazard
And expedited distraction
An illuminated item in demand.
.
Still, it’s in their eyes.
.
They play the game —
The whole thing is still a phenomenon
To enough of an extent
In their minds
That their gazes narrow and their
.
Voices mouth out
Purposeful constructions
To efface Charybdis
Under neon lights.
I’m in the cell phone shop and the dude is doing it in style — a heavy-set Hispanic chap of about 30, with a gentle demeanor, describing to me the condition and potential of my phone. It’s a unit that looks like it’s been run over by a semi-truck, roughly. He’s got a shop about the size of a dentist’s office lobby, with about 60 different sku’s of phones and cases on the wall. The only person in there is me. I feel kind of bad for him, suddenly, envisioning his imminent business demise, and think about the possibility of using all this space for a little flat-top lunch eatery. Wouldn’t that be ironic — the Hispanic in a button-down shirt, talking to people with a gentle demeanor and the Gringo cooking nachos and quesadillas?
He does a little research on my phone, goes to his little back laboratory for a little bit, which is just an open area 10 feet behind his desk, and comes back pretty much singing the death knell of my phone. But I can get a new 8 online for $200, he says.
He’s getting my phone ready to give back to me, finalizing the plans, and this heavy black girl comes in, and, while I’m talking to the guy at his desk, and in heavy breathing, starts ranting about her phone, interupting our conversation. She doesn’t really seem angry — more just wielding of this maniacal sort of focus regarding her product within the American economy, ironic, again, given her garb of spandex pants and tight workout shirt that’s way too small for her.
The thought enters my mind to start chewing her out. 10 years ago, I undoubtedly would have done just this, and then it’s another tab to keep open in your mental Chrome browser all the time, it’s another person harvesting homicidal thoughts of you, when they gauge your persona and skills in articulation. I sit back down, nodding at her when she makes idle commentary at me, which if course, is delivered at approximately 100 decibels.
When she leaves, temporarily, after not getting anything done, I voice to the retailer, “I was so close to chewing her out.”
He laughs. And we all feel a little bit better, until she returns again, looking at us with this senile, glazed-over confidence and ascribing the utmost importance to her phone within the eye of the universe.
And I feel like this is only the beginning. I feel like I’m looking not only at the face of the 2020’s, here, but the 2030’s, 20… eh, I’m rambling. Anyway, I’m happy as a little mouse with my little cheese in the corner, and I thank the dude and get out of there. He doesn’t charge me a cent. I know I should have tipped him 10 or 20 but I’m flat broke. Plus, I’m a little addled from that loud girl who’d barged in and interrupted us, who, mind you, was decidedly not my type, her primary shortcoming of course being a little “unstoppable today” for my tastes.
The populace itself is degraded to a vulnerable brand of detritus
After the passing of time,
The propagation of man
Into the open spaces
Where psychological need replaces
What was once an idyll.
.
In my car, I sit, persecuted,
Stalked and hunted
By a name tag with a face and
Incisors bent on order
In a world that’s been prodded
Like livestock.
The patrons walk into the bar,
Caulked smiles occluding eyes
Of dark, uncertain desperation.
.
In general,
The behavior tends to be uniform,
With mimicry informing most
If not all acts and
Degradation of others a pressing,
Pervasive concern.
.
Dark, mocking
Eyes scroll the list of taps.
.
In minds, thoughts
Race back to big,
Shiny objects, to
Times Square,
To any number of figures
Dressed in name brand clothing and
.
The choice is made
As a cultural statement,
Perceived as a broad, fervent
Stroke handling
What kind of person the customer will be
.
By engaging in the
Theoretical, non-tactile
Act of ordering a beer.
..
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Sitting in your truck after work
With your motor running,
You were the very vista of America.
.
It was six degrees out
And the snow was falling.
.
I started scraping my car
Next to where you were
And you didn’t move
And I could feel your non-movement
Like a chasm bored before whom you had been
And like your own incisor
Back into these cold environs.
.
But when we were in work,
Joking around,
You were like a volcanic explosion of light,
And there was no one else like you.
.
So maybe that’s how you were supposed to be:
A jagged piece of a jigsaw puzzle
Echoing the mooring blades
With a closed circuit and
Reptilian breast plate.