lars again

of me are flaking off every day in shreds and mangles that peel – that I peel – off the soles of my feet or in fat cigarillos of pasty human silt that scratch from neck and shoulders and everywhere else.
and these things which were once me are not me any longer are things.
I make a drama of it too – menacing hard dead calluses with sharp steel provoking sometimes red red corroboration that great theatric
and these are the colors of a body, white and grey and dry and dripping and telescoping out in awkward posts and living and dead and peeling itself apart –
it’s a bad habit.

we live in a boneyard — no, a battlefront — no, a Children's Crusade. — no, no, no. there are no words for something that was once alive. and isn't that a weak word, too, alive. it just survives, no spark of living.
you should have left a dent in history — the world should have trembled before your name. yours. you should have been a god, a woman, anything but a martyr. no world could keep you; no grave can hold you.
if you were alive, you would be like the rest of the living — which is to say so much death, so much knowing, so much life knowing death. and spring would not come early and flowers would not bloom before your feet.
tautology, i know.
i'm sorry, leelah.
#poetry

Well, Annie Lindbergh's baby died, and Eric Clapton's baby died, and Someday I will maybe die of some obscure disease
I'm not a master dramatist I swear I'm not a nihilist I've learned to take survival in degrees
I'm a smartass trapped in a dumbfuck's body I threw up when I held somebody Down, I can't feel anything I don't feel anything
I'm a placeless blame in a blameless place An embarrassment to the human race I'm a faceless god, I'm a godless faith I'm a fake, I'm a phase, I'm a wraith
Mine eyes hath seen the glory of His terrible swift sword And it was carnal, it was gory, it was carnage, it was scored by Wendy Carlos and the Argonauts and lovely Ludwig van Nobody trusts immortals now, but they believe in man
I am jawless, I am lawless, I am flawless, I am free From want and worship, free from speech, and free to fear my devotees As I die to make men holy, let us make men die to see If their souls go marching on
Glory, glory, Hallelujah Glory, glory, Hallelujah Glory, glory, Hallelujah Our souls go marching on
The cornets hailed the glory of his brightly blazing eyes And they were righteous, they were pure and true, they snuffed out all the lies And the artless and the heartless were all feeble in their cries Their souls went marching on
John Brown's body lies a-moldering in the grave Bo Brown's body lies a-moldering in the grave Mike Brown's body lies a-moldering in the grave But their souls go marching on
Glory, glory, Hallelujah Glory, glory, Hallelujah Glory, glory, Hallelujah Their souls go marching on
Smooth runs the water where the brook is deep I'm locked inside the castle keep I could not brave that pious leap of faith, but I guess talk is cheap I guess I left the house asleep And heard the tire meter beep I guess the scars were just skin-deep I guess it wasn't all that deep
I guess this wasn't all that deep I guess a wolf's best friends are sheep I guess the cost of living's steep these days I never get much sleep these days I overleap, I'm overdone, I overcome, I overrun I overwhelm, I'm overmuch, I'm over love and over touch
My eyes are pale and bloodshot and my skin is burning red I don't recognize my face or all the places I have bled My body is a history of kingdoms I once led But my soul goes marching on

I am a Jumbled confused pile of Bricks stones stretching Upward onward to The smokestack to the skyline. I am less than the sum of my parts.
Old Testament, New Testament, anyone could Attest to what is Left of this when the Rest of this that is Less than this falls away.
And I can’t believe That I don’t believe That it was ill-conceived to grieve That I’d leave when I go and go when I leave.
When I breathe, I Fill my lungs with tar and Wish upon a star for Bethlehem to come and cloak and re-enfold my form Within that hollow whole, that hearth of hearts Where all true things must hold. Fist of iron, silver, gold.
I am an inhuman in a human place; my Reflection is no human face; I press my Flesh through thresholds, neglect to brace Against the bold and bitter air, and oh, how Wonderfully it stings!, I want to scream, to Blare through barest bone itself my genuflection To this fatal star, this natal space, and to Wear a rubber mask of Bill Shatner's face; I Am beauty, I am grace, hold Your crown up high, I rain Over all I see, hold Your crown up high.
High; I; eye; aye; by any term, the incorruptible.
#poetry

I don’t remember what it was exactly, but in any case, I tripped and fell. Up,     Up,         Up into the sky.
Past mountains, past rivers. Snowy peaks and apricate banks, Clouds in their diaphanous ranks. Past bats.
Airplanes; pale imitators, really. Too large, too loud, and fettered with logistics Of all sorts; yoked and condemned To straight-line paths by straight-line men with straight- Line minds. That's the bare and bluntest bit of it for You. Theirs is a world in working order: efficient, Effective, exploitable. Theirs are estimable T(hree-) L(etter) T(itle)s; theirs are lives of Handshakes and boardrooms and sign- On-this-line-pleases. And theirs, bought and sold, are these parodic steel volantēs.
Modern marvels, to be sure. But the bat breathes breadth.
And breadth there is in this world, this One, brutish and free; jarfuls Of the stuff. Look around: you Know the spot. And the desert
Will swallow your cries, And the ocean your tears, And the sky, The sky in that moment seemed big enough to hold anything anyone could ever feel, And the sky, That was for everyone.
And these things pass, and the airplane passed.
The grass felt short and stubby beneath my fingertips. Manicured to perfection. It had been me who last cut it.
The grass beneath my fingers attached to my hands going up to my arms into my body somewhere out in the rest, all of it small, all of it small.
I don’t remember what it was exactly, But in any case, I tripped and fell. Up,     Up,        Up into the sky.
Someone called my name. Again. I didn’t care.
Someday the world would start in on me again. It always did, each day being twenty-four long hours; an hour being sixty minutes; one sweep of a lonely planet round a lonelier star being three-hundred sixty-five-plus-one-quarter-of-a-day, more or less.
But the sky, that was for everyone.
And tonight it was for me and the bats.
#poetry

I don’t want to be whole; I hate the whole of the hole I’m living in. Words terrify me. They pass me by in droves and I can't recall them, and they never stay mine once I breathe them out, across the barricade of my lips.
I wasn’t built to walk this world. That much is clear. Perhaps to walk some other: what source could there be but the alien for this noise noise noise noise noise? — it will swallow me whole one day and I won’t leave anything but a note. “Dear Earthlings,” it could start. Noise noise noise noise, TV static; it must annul itself, in the end. It moves me to mortido as often as great monuments. mortido (mɔɹˈtiː.dəʊ) n. (psychol.) The energy of the death instinct. Nothing beside remains. Giveth, taketh away, naked I came and naked shall I return. Etcetera. Suchlike. All that jazz.
Noise noise noise; one night it whispered in my ear as I stood in a park holding a folding chair, legs shaking. I heard. Its voice was heavenly, maybe Jovian. And here in the dim crater of the park, I felt death's pulse and grew sure of its approach, for me or someone else. It was all around me always, maybe. Like the fish who doesn't know it lives in water. David Foster Wallace said that. He also threw a coffee table at Mary Karr. He killed himself almost 15 years ago now, which is more than I can say. Good riddance. Humanity has far too many geniuses as it stands.
What was I talking about again?
Oh, yes. He left a note, too; for his wife only. I couldn't have read it anyway; I wasn't yet four months old. And who would I myself write to, even? I am like one Monsieur Wheelock, in Such a Pretty Little Picture, who dreams of disappearing. “The ‘Oh, hell’ rather troubled him. Mr. Wheelock felt that he would like to retain that; it completed the gesture so beautifully. But he didn't quite know to whom he should say it.” Dottie Parker wrote that. She was done in by a heart attack; a noble, honest, peaceable way to go. Oh, I am to my neck in death! These ghosts speak to me like a regular Ebenezer.
I am not sure whether to fear it or to yearn for it or what. On the one, dying is not so different from living; short and painless, if you’re lucky. But death itself is forever. Then again, nothing is forever, as the good Siddhartha taught, so death may be nothing after all. Well said, Siddy boy: congratulations and felicitations to you. Dukkha, dukkha, ducdame, that's what I think of you, you ignoble youth.
Anyone can live forever. It isn't so hard. Noise noise.
#poetry

(The following is a version of Bo Burnham's That Funny Feeling written for a live performance that probably won't happen.)
Hocus pocus, I can’t focus, guess I’ll do a song If you know the words already, please don’t sing along ‘Cus I went and rewrote ‘em, now I’ll quote ‘em, brand-new prose The chorus bit is coming up, and this is how it goes
There it is again, that funny feeling That funny feeling There it is again, that funny feeling That funny feeling
Church of Euthanasia, aphantasia, grand design Living hard or hardly living, where do you draw the line? Karmic retribution, evolution, antifreeze Giving head while standing up, then crying on your knees Manmade freak of nature, binging Frasier, sniffing glue Icarus did ecstasy, and look how high he flew Fake McMansion pillars, ladykillers, carpet bombs Daoist stickers on the vans of white suburban moms
There it is again, that funny feeling That funny feeling There it is again, that funny feeling That funny feeling
Skinheads, schizoids, hooligans, pervs and SROs Punks and yuppies, monks and duppies, tidy little rows Corporate branded matches, army patches, CSI Omorashi, omophagy, Story of the Eye Born years after 9/11, I’m already through Kill myself at 27, hey, Kurt, how are you? I can see forever, aren’t I clever, Hashtag Blessed Damn, these ends are meaner than I ever could have guessed
There it is again, that funny feeling That funny feeling There it is again, that funny feeling That funny feeling
Christopher E. Hansen, Access Manson, Bernie Dohrn Elon Musk v. Zuckerberg, 4K VR porn “La guerre a-t-elle vraiment lieu?”, Hanahaki, Lebensraum $20 Marxist shirts from Redbubble.com Overdose on melatonin, Edward Cullen fics Glasgow smile, kinda sullen, January 6 Dreading your existence, but you wouldn’t steal a car It’s just a burning memory, I wonder where you are
There it is again, that funny feeling That funny feeling There it is again, that funny feeling That funny feeling
Hey, what can you say? We were overdue But it'll be over soon, you wait Hey, what can you say? Thought I was over you But it'll be over soon, just wait Sku-bu-dah, sku-bu-dah, sku-bu-dah-uh-uhm Hey, what can you say? We were overdue But it'll be over soon, you wait Sku-bu-dah, sku-bu-dah, sku-bu-dah-uh-uhm Hey, what can you say? We were overdue But it'll be over soon, you wait Ba-da-da, ba-da-da, ba-da Hey, what can you say? We were overdue But it'll be over soon, you wait Ba-da-da, ba-da-da, ba-da-da-da-dum Hey!
#lyrics

If the medium is the message, I wish I could learn not to speak at all.
Imagine that: free from our cages of text and marble and acrylic, Back home in God's estate, sunny old Eden. Here we know only the language of hearts, Spoken as skin against skin and written in deep breaths and pumping blood. Something kicking. Something real.
But now it isn't, because now it is word again, Unreadable to me, because I wrote it, And the thought behind it is long faded, Leaving only a hackneyed husk. Just words. Dammit.
#poetry

I set out today in a deep and muggy swelter, my mind well apart from its earthly locus. From where I stand the sky is a sheet, bluish-grey and oppressively blank, and cicadas drone and birds creech horribly. Dusk is gasping at my back. I meet no one, no one, and make damn sure of it too, turning into an alley I don't recognize; no one but birds and faceless drivers. I'm not here to clear my head. It is already empty, thoroughly, a void that upwells to my eyes. “Windows to the soul,” aren't they. To my either side now is a jungle of vacant dirt and unfinished construction and awkward raised concrete beds. Weeds choke a driveway through a thick web of cracks. Maybe from this high resistance looks like revolt.
#prose

I was born in the body I was born I was I
I was formed in the soul I was formed I was I
I am never loved enough I am loved I am I
I am real when I control I am real I am I
I will die in the body I will die I will I
#poetry