We Are All Liars

Sitting alone in a room, New Year of 2017. Futures - both real and imagined - swell and sigh in my mind like dormant volcanoes, infected sores. I find myself fixated on Tuvan throat singing; as if blasted by a bolt of divine lightning, the strident, difficult sounds of a strident, difficult people begin to rattle my cheap Dell plug-and-play speakers. Somewhere, caught in the musty trap of a retiree's garage, a lonely Inspiron yearns for its lost audio output.

Sometimes I wonder why those pesky nomadic peoples kept pushing, kept probing, century after century, ever eastward, ever westward. They cannot have been that bored: try finding a week's worth of grown food or forage on the Mongolian steppe and let me know how much free time you can muster. They say idle hands are the devil's workshop. There are no idle hands on the steppe.

How many children and children's children from the horsemasters of the Khentii saw the world grow, and shed its layers like skin from a snake? The Romans metastasizing across the Mediterranean, the Chinese coalescing into the superstate of empire, the first Caliphates birthed in the merciless sands of Arabia. To be surrounded on all sides at all times by economic competition, vastly technologically advanced cultures, societies changing and morphing faster than their flimsy borders could corral them. What is the steppe nomad in the face of these? Theirs should be a history of slavery, subjugation, starvation, servility. But it is not.

And does it even matter why?

Brain Farts

I write poetry at work when I'm bored. It isn't particularly good, but that isn't why one should write. If it inspires (or infects), then it's done its job.

Blood bars. Essence drinkers, parched,
Line up like predatory birds:
Scavengers quayside.

Proboscis points, prominent threats;
Searching for lividity in
Predator and prey alike.

Scarlet orgies are the nights,
Sharp pencils piercing ripened fruit -
Carnage writhes and grinds the lights
As fear smooths the wrinkle on his three-piece suit.

I know it's been a while since my last post, but classes just started back up and it's shockingly difficult to make ends meet for a low class male in a big city, so my free time is scant at the moment. Let's just say I don't get tips for being flirty.

Keep an eye out in the next few days for something I've been working on, both as a personal quest and an attempt to help other bipolar individuals cope with mood swings. I'm calling it The Music Shrink; maybe it'll help someone out there who's trying to stay on an even keel in a turbulent sea.

Be well, reader.

Day Several of One Hundred and Many

Yeah, yeah. It's a little late, I know. But who doesn't love a little procrastination? Besides, it isn't as if I'm getting paid for this (One day, one day....) Nah, I'm getting paid to ferry drinks to drunks and drunks to drinks. It's quite ironic, now that I think about it. I'm an enabler of an entire city's predilection for substances, but hey, I gotta keep the AC on somehow.

I cut my beard into a strange goatee yesterday. I can't decide if I look like General Zod or the bastard spawn of Ron Perlman and Zach Galifianakis. Works either way, I guess. It's refreshing and absurd in equal measure when you aren't trying to impress a special someone every day of your life. I feel like a kid who held in a fart for too long in a room with his middle school crush, and now she's gone and I can test how far I can fart the alphabet.

But enough asides; thsis is starting to read like a Tristram Shandy knock-off.

Hey, everyone. Welcome to my mind's seedy biker bar; we got scotch on tap, everything on the menu is served with jalapenos, and the clientele is plucked straight from Bukowski's fever-dreams. If this is your first time reading, I apologize in advance. If not, well, you know precisely what you're in for.

I wanted to restart my entries with a quick update on yours truly. I've recently moved back to my city-muse, Richmond. She's a winsome lass, when she's not puking on your shoes. I remember the first time I wrote about this city, years ago in a tiny student newspaper called The Black Sheep. I really hadn't been in the city for more than a few months at the time, so I was at a loss for content. But after a serendipitous experience with some trainhoppers at Belle Isle, little wide-eyed Ben set out to pen an ode to the Isle and her nuances. It's quaint, in retrospect; the Isle is now universally popular - maybe more so than when I first visited - and universally cramped. Not in a stuffy way, but you definitely lose the slapshod majesty of the Isle if you're pounding beers next to a family with two newborns and a collapsible baby hammock. Regardless, it's good to be back in a place where I have at least a fraction of history. And for a kid who grew up with Uncle Sam, finding a home is notoriously elusive. Your roots only go a few months deep, then they slough off like the tail of a salamander in crisis. They grow back, but they grow back a bit shorter each time.

At this rate I'm going to be a potted houseplant with the trunk of a baobab.

Oh, and one more thing to any writers out there. I think the worst course of action for a writer is to take inspiration from their past work. It's akin to mixing fresh food with the rotten rinds of last month's offal, or setting up a date with a girl you knew in Pre-school. All art made with pieces of yourself has a shelf life, and once it goes bad you can't shock it out of lividity. Let it die, and be reborn. Sometimes the past is easy to hold on to, but only because we refuse to see its putrefaction.

Going to review some music in the next few days, as part of my attempt to inject good taste into American culture. Yes, I'm quite serious, and yes it's possible.... Stop laughing.

You wanna see what cultureless existence looks like?

https://youtu.be/24R8JObNNQ4

HEIL KARDASHIAN HEIL BUZZFEED HEIL THE CONSENSUS HEIL HOLLYWOOD HEIL PRETTY PEOPLE HEIL YOUTH HEIL THE TIMESTAMP HEIL HASHTAG UBER ALLES.

Sorry, I almost made a bad joke there.

The Lazarus Hangover

Hello, old friend. It's been years upon years, seasons upon seasons; grey hairs and bad knees and leathern hearts find us all, apparently.

But I have news. I'm bringing back the blog. Just one more useless sounding board in the fathomless Internet sea, but if I don't put these words somewhere they'll overstay their welcome in my brain. Gotta kick these kids out and make 'em earn a livin' like a real man.

Here's my plan, fellow degenerates:

*I will be posting a weekly diatribe about life/work/politics/existence
*I'll be sprinkling in the unfinished prose or poetry I'm working on throughout the week, a few times a week
*Occasionally I'll post my personal reviews of films/music/games that I feel haven't been done justice in the court of public opinion
*Please feel free to comment and message me about my postings, I'll try my darndest to respond and keep the dialogue alive

Buckle up, folks. This blog's gonna be 200% more bipolar than I am.

4/22/2013

These streets are awfully duplicitous. Richmond, the strumpet. The fungus, tall and tame; with pennies to its tarnished name.

She's just as likely to seduce you into the alley and show you what a real woman can do, as she is to rob you blind at the edge of a blade. But that's what keeps us here, isn't it? The unpredictability of the mad lover. The eternal Beatrice to the temporal Dante; steam-powered hearts belching pollutants, lusting for Empyrean and purgatory in equal measure.

I've missed writing this blog. Maybe because it gave me the opportunity to shout from the digital rooftops a message I never could cry out in the street. Maybe because I have a subconscious Freudian desire to strap together some cardboard and etch "THE END IS NEER" in messy lettering. Or maybe because this is the only form of social interaction my selfish mind cannot sabotage. But I hope you are doing well, reader.

I just wrote a few jots of rambling poetry in a fit of terrifyingly indifferent artistic passion this morning; inspired by whoever decides to read them, I guess. I like to think prose is my preferred medium, but it's much more humbling to write in a form you aren't very good with.

So if you enjoy them, that's good. And if you don't, that's good too. I hope that me reviving this little blog will pique minds somewhere and somehow, for better or for worse, or at least incite a few people to put down their iPhones for 30 seconds or so. Hey, Gandhi started in a court in South Africa; maybe I can start at the corner of Broad and Belvidere.

-

We blessed with warmer climes know
Where the frost gives way to sea.
And how each sunset Charon ferries
Thousands more to shore,
In chains, to freeze.

-

The endless ever reaching ever scraping
Countless faceless time
Covers our roots in lichen. Callused mastoids
Are we, dessicated;
Intravenous lifeblood from the lesser gods
That stains our leaves with jaundice
Gives us life, by definition.
(If you'd like to call it such)

the effects of affect

"Not every self-destructive tendency is the same. Some people tread the border between recklessness and destruction simply to find the one who will "save" them from themselves.

They utilize actions and emotions as beacons - lighthouses, if you will - in hopes that they will attract at least a marginal amount of attention.

These individuals are not truly indifferent, or even truly foolhardy. They are needy: Driven by a supposed loneliness or discontent, they act out just as children do. These people are easy to spot, often adopting characteristics that, however contrived, will garner some amount of compassion or sympathy. These people are common.

But there are others. These individuals are not common, although it seems they follow the same modus operandi of attention-seekers. They are almost impossible to help, for they have no interest in eliciting any response from others. And herein lies the dilemma: To put it bluntly, they do not seek rescue or sympathy or even acknowledgement from their own personal terrestrial Christ. They want someone to watch them die."

I don't write with much at stake: only everything.

I needed to write a quick story.

No amount of 'Hey-I-was-a-dancer-once-in-high-school' could salvage her wobbled approach to the counter. "And you're going to walk that way now" - a jabbing motion towards the garage - "and I'll just walk this way." She pointed inaccurately at either the back door or the pantry, then shuffled straight to the bathroom, bourbon in hand.

"Well, sure. Awfully dichotomizes our choices, but..."

"You just..? You did. You used dichotomized in a sentence. Dichotomized. Jeezus *hic* Christ. You're more queer than your stupid fucking haircut."

"Okay. Um, yeah. Well, I suppose I could give you a ride. I mean, if that's okay."

A sarcastic chuckle came from behind the half-closed bathroom door.

"You know *hic* what? I'm gonna be alright. Yup. I'm gonna, uh, I'll be fine. You... Just fucking go home or something."

"Are you sure you don't need anyone to walk you to your house? I mean, it's late, you know?" In her drunken stupor, she mustered up her most balanced stance and swung the nearly empty bottle of Wild Turkey in what her blurred sense of perception thought was my face.

"Holy sh- what the fuck!?"

"Well, David, do YOU know? Huh, do ya? Do ya know? Do ya fucking know? That's all you *hic* do, you just fucking know. You spend all your time with your "grand" ideas and your, uh, artistic stuff and whatever. You're so full of shit you can't even recognize it anymore. Go back to your room and *hic* play your Tom Waits and masturbate." The bathroom door slammed shut.

I didn't bother to take note of the weather or the time or the moonlight or even the muffled music coming from the unattended stereo in the living room, which had inevitably cycled to the obscure basement of my music library.

But I did take note of the sound of her boots kicking open the back door, and the slipshod screen door rattling soon after. I did take note of the several drunken expletives she hurled at me as she grasped what was left of the whiskey and dragged it across the cheap kitchen counter. I took note of the oddly graceful way she moved when she carried it; a perfect silhouette in the harsh, flickering fluorescent light. I took note of my desperate lunge to the back door in an effort to change a night that had already been bled to death.

"Enjoy your evening with your cat", she sneered. Turning the alley corner, she mustered a final hateful swing with the newly-emptied bottle and shattered it into a thousand alcoholic glass slivers; I took note. Just as I always do, I took note. Oblivion was in the last bottle, and I took note.

She gradually faded into the dimly lit alleyway, leaving only the eerily visible fluorescent red in her hair as a memorial of her passing. "I miss you."...of all the things I could have said, I said "I miss you." Fuck.

I didn't have any more comebacks; not even a vapid movie line to shout triumphantly and pierce the indifferent night. I didn't even have a quick serenade. I had a a fistful of her impossibly patched jean jacket and a bloodied ego. And in perfect fatalistic fashion, as she was swallowed back into the night, I caught her last mumbled response:

"Yeah, I know."