.

I have to let go of everything I’ve ever been,
Because to grasp that thing you were in the past
That IS ego,
And I have seen ego as being the pestilence,
The paradox of present absence,
An impossible, furtive seed

At what point in the day is joy GUARANTEED,
When there would be food for everyone and
Good thoughts that yes, what, well,
The sky is my eyes
And Ford Aerostars rumble slightly
Down dirt paths of nature’s collusion
With the wife putting down her phone
To the side rest,
Not knowing what to do,
Nature’s fingers squeaking of their own match point.

After reading about so many “remarkably cosmopolitan educations,”
You start to realize why there are class differences in the first place,
And why there is anger,
Education amounting to an obstinately dormant social rule knowing
Nothing of the black man’s smile
As he parts from the parking garage
With a gaiety unknown to the third kind.

I was sort of surprised that they referred to any of these creatures as “women.” Their faces seemed grey, under the endless gloomy sky, under the burden of daunting work weeks which they’d escape by indulging in corporately endorsed products.
Here and there, one more thing, and nothing really meant much. I was admiring, though, and envious, of those who truly found a way to have a voice, underneath all the hurry, underneath the polluted quagmire of both noise and material. And it was those who spread their wings the farthest who would incur the most risk: whereas it was easy to just establish your identity as a nondescript worker, and then go home.
This is more what I did, so I got lonely, and went out to bars. In this one commercial cluster, it had been built over what prior was a giant grove of trees, also the soccer fields where I played as a kid. I sat in and watched the Michigan game, this dude there with his wife bought me three Two-Hearteds, and at the end of the day (my shift drinking in there, I’m referring to), this beautiful blond bartender came up, just in for her shift, looking at me in a way no one ever really had, and smiling in a way nobody ever really had, to me. There was something light and mobile about her, like a cat, but also benign, benevolent, friendly. It was like there in her eyes, and there in her spirit, was the natural paradigm of that grove of trees which had come there before — she was relaying to us all that old earthly tranquility and splendor which had prior been our luxury. But then, sometimes the satisfaction we get out of nature has naught to do but with our conception of our own superiority over animals, and that’s really moral, is it?
Dudes bashing each other in the head, and us watching it on TV, now that’s moral. I fell a little in love with this bartender on this night, but I am not someone who moves fast, so I thought I’d let the overall occasion of the football game, and the drinking camaraderie, and the relaxing weekend there in my hometown where I lived, all settle in.
Well, life moves fast. Eventually as I kept going into that bar, I kept seeing that ‘tender, and I noticed that her body was filling in. Before, she’d literally been rail-thin, no noticeable bust whatsoever, and had made an impression just with her beautiful cheekbones, eyes, and natural glowing effervescence. But now she was almost like a beast that stalked the world — she had filled in on both sides and had all of a sudden a body like a swimsuit model, not like a taller Fiona Apple. I thought back to that one night I’d seen her for the first time, and things like why I liked her — I wouldn’t have even thought to look at her posterior end, but later I did notice that she wore yoga pants, which was very much in the style in 2013. What had happened to that? Where was that purity? Maybe I should have asked for her name and number, and just talked, and somehow slowed her down to my level, shown her that she was already so beautiful, and that she possessed a sort of inner beauty which involves making people around her feel good in psychosomatic splendor, and that this should really be the essence of life in the first place.

Oh God, my jaw is bent out of shape and unsubstantial, and I quit chewing tobacco, but once in a while I’ll still throw one in: and I have to be careful then not to let it form into a habit all over again. The stuff is addictive in many ways, one of which is that sometimes you’ll think of some music you heard while dipping, and in order to feel like you’re fully enjoying that music, you’ll have to throw another one in, to really sink into that feeling. But another factor is public will.
Sometimes I’ll just see seven different people dipping in one night, in public places, and I’ll just think to myself, can I really be within righteous parameters continuing to abstain from said activity? Like, in life, we’re already born corporeally, but we also assemble ourselves, in addition to this, every day. We set up stratagems for succeeding — but then we’ll go out drinking too, and I think this bespeaks our need for camaraderie. At the end of the day, what we desire more than our own autonomous success is a sort of divine unity.
I go out drinking in a wife beater. I’m back in Indiana, my home state: I’m not gonna lie. This is what we do. I get a smile from this girl parked in a car about halfway through town, at a stop sign: her eyes traverse the entire autumnal season with the colors of the sunset. Earlier at work my boss had literally had a chud in all day, and now, in T.G.I. Friday’s, where I will drink too much and listen to other people tell me stories probably 15% of which are true, the bartender has a dog in too.
On my way home, I just have to stop, and god damn if this isn’t the funniest gas station I’ve ever been in, right outside the Honey Creek Mall in Terre Haute, Indiana. Right in front of me, the girl about to check out is babbling on about her mom: “I’m 22… she’s 36, or 38, or 40… I don’t even know!” The clerk dismisses her and asks me “Have you HAD the strawberry donuts? They’re nasty.” “I’ll live,” I say. I polish them off during my bike ride home, they’re delicious, and then I put the chud in.
Anyway, is the same rule true for chicks… like, if a bunch of guys just like them, will they finally just pick one and get with him, even if they don’t like any? I dunno. This was gonn a be my topic, but I’ve finally decided that I’m not a chick, so I can’t write about it. C’est la vie.

Things will once again simplify —
So rejoice and be glad
For the natural cycles of life,
And the ordeal of staring at sweaty palms
In the middle of summer,
Only to trade places with them
And feel their smiles
Before autumn’s chill of
Ciders, blankets, rhapsodies.

Cursed with a face of ingenuous exactitude
I’m afraid I am
When I would rather have sun stroked eyes.
.
The underdog role would be more fierce,
I think,
An ability to see for miles down streets
So wanting for my rapid movements.
.
Time and again,
My inner oracle calls for a self-examination,
And in my face I see discovery,
A human truth,
When I would rather see steely, ungoverned straightness,
A hidden truth.
.
People look to me,
Not at me,
And in the flourished, nursing countenance I bequeath,
.
They glean the fresh fancies of this next moment’s procession,
And the dawn,
The temporary, disposable vagary
Of each trip to Heaven.

This is the abbreviation for post-traumatic stress disorder.
As a way of accounting for the extreme frequency of its applicability to individuals in the general public, we will hereby refer to it by its abbreviation.

I work right now in Central Indiana, Terre Haute. It’s a town right on I-70, 60,000 people. And I sh** you not, I’ve just had the best chicken parmesan sandwich I’ve ever had in my life.
Let’s backtrack a bit here. Let’s go like, for instance, anywhere. Chicken parmesans suck thoroughly. Let’s start with Colorado. Those motherfu**ers at first didn’t know what I was talking about when I asked for a chicken parmesan, and then they tried serving me that sliced sh**. Sliced fu**ing chicken, like that deli turkey bullsh**. The pizza out in Colorado sucked too.
The pizza in my hometown, South Bend, Indiana, is pretty good, but as with anywhere, the chicken parmesan is a very SPECIAL, divisive issue. Take this one restaurant experience I had, when I was like eight years old. I ordered the “chicken parmesan,” not sandwich, just the dish, the entree, at some random Italian dive, and the look I gave my father upon receiving the item must have made him question the validity of having kids. The thing not only had no flavor, and no exotic veggies surrounding it… also, it had no bread.
Now, South Bend is a crossroads of sorts (and indeed, Indiana is called the “crossroads of America,” whatever, I just try to get drunk as much as possible, basically). There was a dude from Jersey. I asked him if a chicken parmesan was big back there. Is a chicken parmesan big back there. He gave me this look of unprecedented, volcanic disbelief, at the stupidity of my question. OBVIOUSLY, OBVIOUSLY, chicken parmesan is soon to replace oxygen as the primary respiratory source for humanity. [1] Well, sh**, you could have fooled me, seeing as in Colorado they can’t even make a pizza, let alone a sandwich. [2]
But then, that pretty much sums up my hometown. You should have known, dude. What are you doing breathing oxygen, why don’t you, like, look like Popeye, and sh**.
Well, anyway, this place I currently work at has this special breading flour for the parmy, and I must say it’s glorious. It ends up being a grilled chicken breast, but the flour itself contains cheese, so when it goes onto the flat top grill, over a considerable amount of butter (to prevent sticking), the cheddar and such cheeses end up melting and crisping up, sort of like potato chips or something, on the outside of the breast. Then, when it’s pretty much done cooking or feeling pretty firm, it goes with a pizza sauce and a shredded mozzarella into a baking oven of about 500 degrees, for about three or four minutes or so, just to sew things up. And so, we have come to our destination.
.

[1] Interesting I mention the East Coast here: apparently in Philly this one purportedly “authentic” steak deli actually uses Cheez Whiz as its primary topping.

.
[2] This granted might not be completely their fault: rumor has it that the Whole Foods I worked at in Colorado used to actually import water from the East Coast for making its dough, because of its higher mineral content, toward the pizza, which by and large was indeed of some regard.

As bad as love hurts
When you’re 18,
Swinging your mighty axe
Before the bedeviled spirit of adulthood
And making like whims
Under gusts at the top of Mount Everest
Just barely hanging on by your limber gait
And your steely jaw,
.
The colors will start churning
And churning
The moment you get older,
The thought of death
Flanked by senses as you behold the day,
.
By this wisdom
So overly nourished
For no reason
But its own gore.