Whiskey sour
Say good bye
Texas Hold em and nervous eyes
I'm in not wanted here
I thought
(But I always think that)
Sitting down and sitting out
Watching everyone with no one looking back
I spot the landing plane against black backdrop
Blinking Christmas color lights
And fireworks
It's Independence Day meets Santa
Everyone has a problem,
the same problem, tonight
We are the very definition of the blind leading the blind
23, educated, jobless, and opinionated
My foot slipped on the stucco walls and I knew it was time to leave
I should have left an hour earlier
But what do I know
At this point, nothing much
Saturday, August 29, 2009
Monday, August 24, 2009
Does not meet qualifications
Quiet hours
They murder me in silence
Trapped
Wretched chains
Too tight to move
Sun burned and wasted
White screens and a colony of ants
forming characters and qualifications
Dance and sing for the ring masters of the world
Shake hands
Make Merry
the selfish grinning money launderers
All to become nothing more than a small fee
one cog in the machine
easily afforded
easily replaced
easily forgotten
The world seems a theme park
where all the rides have minimum requirements
"You must be this tall ---->"
And I couldn't reach it on my tip toes
Screams and thrills
First I hesitated
now desperately I plea
Blistering metal bench
and foot traffic
Watch the people walk by
watch them get in line
watch them strap in and smile
Quiet hours
They murder me with silence
They murder me in silence
Trapped
Wretched chains
Too tight to move
Sun burned and wasted
White screens and a colony of ants
forming characters and qualifications
Dance and sing for the ring masters of the world
Shake hands
Make Merry
the selfish grinning money launderers
All to become nothing more than a small fee
one cog in the machine
easily afforded
easily replaced
easily forgotten
The world seems a theme park
where all the rides have minimum requirements
"You must be this tall ---->"
And I couldn't reach it on my tip toes
Screams and thrills
First I hesitated
now desperately I plea
Blistering metal bench
and foot traffic
Watch the people walk by
watch them get in line
watch them strap in and smile
Quiet hours
They murder me with silence
Saturday, August 15, 2009
Kick Back
The living room was muggy and dimly lit and I felt uncomfortable. Everyone was drinking warm beer because the refrigerator stopped cooling anything. In my chair I sipped and tried to enjoy what I could of domestic brew from a can but it wasn't going well. It just tasted stale to me, stagnant and unchanging with no possibility of ever reaching it's full potential, which for this beer would have been to give me a buzz. Instead I felt full and uncomfortable.
People were laughing as is so often the case with a kick back. Laughing about what, though, I couldn't say, we had been drinking for a few hours and the conversation was so fragmented that I just let it become white noise. I knew I wasn't missing anything important. Gossip and memories mostly, long since overwrought memories which brought up so many more bad thoughts than good ones.
There comes a point when you don't really know if people are your friends anymore. Not in any clear way, but in the way that taints every conversation and curdles beneath the surface of every forced exchange. Laughing seems more like coughing - like everyone in the room is sick and liquor is the medicine. It helps us choke down each other's presence; makes the pain seem like acquaintance.
"Hey Evan, you find a job yet?" said my sickly friend.
In general I hated that question. It confirmed my own fears that I was failing to become anything and my answer confirmed their suspicions that I wasn't anything. But hearing it from a friend cut a little deeper. My quick being threatened by my peers.
"No, you know there's just not a lot out there right now..."
"I bet you wish you majored in something else, hahaha, I mean you could always go into another field, a degree is a degree, you know?"
"Yeah definitely" I muttered.
"I mean with a communications degree you could work as a teacher if you get your credential, or even some business HR. You can still be kinda creative there too, I mean it is a job after all."
Mmhmm.
It pained me to know the truth in what he said. That I would not find success because so very few people did. That maybe I had wasted 4 years believing I actually had a shot.
A smile crept across his face like he'd finally caught me in my lie. That devilish grin flicking ashes on the notion that a clear slacker like me would ever find success in a trade not based on hard facts or mental accuity, but instead that nebulous word, creativity - the cancer of academia. An affront to the hard hours he put into numbers and networking and straight laced suits and can do attitude.
But I had considered those things. Logic was always dogged and I rarely found relief from the pressure to make something of myself. So as he watched me, my expression, searching for a sign that he woke me up to reality for the first time, I gave him no such prize. Just a smile.
"Yeah a job is a job, you are right about that." With that I nodded my can in his direction and he took of swig of his, coughing and patting me on the shoulder.
I set down the beer without drinking from it. It had failed to do anything worthwhile and now it would become waste along with the other cans - in the end they all shared a similar fate. Someday we would all be adults, I thought as I glanced at my childhood friends. Someday we would all make that sacrifice of self for a greater good. Spouses and children and God and jobs. Something worth celebrating with expensive bottles of wine and delicate stemware. But for now we are just 12oz cans at a kick back.
Nothing more than a means to a cheap drunk.
People were laughing as is so often the case with a kick back. Laughing about what, though, I couldn't say, we had been drinking for a few hours and the conversation was so fragmented that I just let it become white noise. I knew I wasn't missing anything important. Gossip and memories mostly, long since overwrought memories which brought up so many more bad thoughts than good ones.
There comes a point when you don't really know if people are your friends anymore. Not in any clear way, but in the way that taints every conversation and curdles beneath the surface of every forced exchange. Laughing seems more like coughing - like everyone in the room is sick and liquor is the medicine. It helps us choke down each other's presence; makes the pain seem like acquaintance.
"Hey Evan, you find a job yet?" said my sickly friend.
In general I hated that question. It confirmed my own fears that I was failing to become anything and my answer confirmed their suspicions that I wasn't anything. But hearing it from a friend cut a little deeper. My quick being threatened by my peers.
"No, you know there's just not a lot out there right now..."
"I bet you wish you majored in something else, hahaha, I mean you could always go into another field, a degree is a degree, you know?"
"Yeah definitely" I muttered.
"I mean with a communications degree you could work as a teacher if you get your credential, or even some business HR. You can still be kinda creative there too, I mean it is a job after all."
Mmhmm.
It pained me to know the truth in what he said. That I would not find success because so very few people did. That maybe I had wasted 4 years believing I actually had a shot.
A smile crept across his face like he'd finally caught me in my lie. That devilish grin flicking ashes on the notion that a clear slacker like me would ever find success in a trade not based on hard facts or mental accuity, but instead that nebulous word, creativity - the cancer of academia. An affront to the hard hours he put into numbers and networking and straight laced suits and can do attitude.
But I had considered those things. Logic was always dogged and I rarely found relief from the pressure to make something of myself. So as he watched me, my expression, searching for a sign that he woke me up to reality for the first time, I gave him no such prize. Just a smile.
"Yeah a job is a job, you are right about that." With that I nodded my can in his direction and he took of swig of his, coughing and patting me on the shoulder.
I set down the beer without drinking from it. It had failed to do anything worthwhile and now it would become waste along with the other cans - in the end they all shared a similar fate. Someday we would all be adults, I thought as I glanced at my childhood friends. Someday we would all make that sacrifice of self for a greater good. Spouses and children and God and jobs. Something worth celebrating with expensive bottles of wine and delicate stemware. But for now we are just 12oz cans at a kick back.
Nothing more than a means to a cheap drunk.
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
My as yet unanswered inquiry
Tell me something!
I yelled at the heavens
those swirling pinpoints of light that Van Gogh saw
bright and big enough to swallow anything
that ever existed on this planet
as if nothing ever did
That is true permanence
I thought
This sky is the same one that Jesus and Galileo
and Einstein saw
IT spoke to them
So I spoke to it
I know there's more that I'm not seeing here
Secrets the silent darkness held from me
A satellite sped through my vision
I almost missed it
one of mankind's greatest achievements
barely visible
Light and Dark
that's all there really is
Which one am I?
I yelled at the heavens
those swirling pinpoints of light that Van Gogh saw
bright and big enough to swallow anything
that ever existed on this planet
as if nothing ever did
That is true permanence
I thought
This sky is the same one that Jesus and Galileo
and Einstein saw
IT spoke to them
So I spoke to it
I know there's more that I'm not seeing here
Secrets the silent darkness held from me
A satellite sped through my vision
I almost missed it
one of mankind's greatest achievements
barely visible
Light and Dark
that's all there really is
Which one am I?
Monday, August 10, 2009
2 cigarettes and maybe 20 minutes
The moon flooded my eyes
she did
light wave after another
pounding the receptors and cones
with pure white
Shielding the ember from the summer eve's mouth
the orange ash politely radiated the inside of my hand
with heat
and in the miles below me
a hundred thousand embers also smoldered
The line of demarcation between the two worlds
one ruled by pack mentality and howls
shrieking, echoing
and the other in organized squares
with approximately straight lines
and wavy heat rising from it
I was happily in purgatory
not nature, not society
wanting to be left alone by all
To mend my wounds on my own
to feel the night like any human being in past
breathe deep and explain the taste
for myself
Like the thousands of families
each with their own little lamp
the darkness my disguise
the moon my revealer
There is so much beauty in a California summer night
on the gently cooling
dusty foothills of a mountain
Rose Street is an empty cul-de-sac
where I shared a cigarette or two with the night
a small row of vacant lots
left void by recessionomics
It was there I made a sanctuary
against a backdrop of man and God made glory
I drank it all in
waving my hands across it like a fireplace
Yet, my shoulders drew cold
Adam's desire still burning in his most pathetic of kin
My Eden, a stalled housing development
she did
light wave after another
pounding the receptors and cones
with pure white
Shielding the ember from the summer eve's mouth
the orange ash politely radiated the inside of my hand
with heat
and in the miles below me
a hundred thousand embers also smoldered
The line of demarcation between the two worlds
one ruled by pack mentality and howls
shrieking, echoing
and the other in organized squares
with approximately straight lines
and wavy heat rising from it
I was happily in purgatory
not nature, not society
wanting to be left alone by all
To mend my wounds on my own
to feel the night like any human being in past
breathe deep and explain the taste
for myself
Like the thousands of families
each with their own little lamp
the darkness my disguise
the moon my revealer
There is so much beauty in a California summer night
on the gently cooling
dusty foothills of a mountain
Rose Street is an empty cul-de-sac
where I shared a cigarette or two with the night
a small row of vacant lots
left void by recessionomics
It was there I made a sanctuary
against a backdrop of man and God made glory
I drank it all in
waving my hands across it like a fireplace
Yet, my shoulders drew cold
Adam's desire still burning in his most pathetic of kin
My Eden, a stalled housing development
Wednesday, August 05, 2009
Strange day for love
The man sitting across from me was not my boss, but a hollowed out exoskeleton of him. His eyes were tired and demeanor defeated. He sipped at his coffee begrudgingly, only sampling a little bit like a man committing suicide through bitter drink.
"Hey Evan you write a lot, right?" he said, his hemlock tinged breath seeping through cigarette yellowed teeth.
I said that I had.
"Well, my wife served me with divorce papers last night."
Shocked that I was hearing this, my heart sunk a little and I knew why he was such a subdued version of himself.
"She came in with a stone faced stare and handed them to me while I sat on my couch watching TV."
Why he was confiding in me was not clear. It was overwhelming and I didn't know what to say. He probably had children my age and to think that I could relate to him and sympathize on a legitimate level to match the problem would be incredulous.
"I'm so sorry Frank," I said staring at him directly. "That's terrible."
He smiled weakly, like an old dog straining to lift himself off of a backyard porch. "I've seen it coming for a while now, it was only a matter of time," he said.
"Oh, well... I'm really sorry," I said redundantly, searching for the wise sounding words I would give a friend in need but finding only simple, repeating sympathies.
"It's for the best I think," he said. "But that's why I asked if you wrote, I have to go to court to determine child support and I want to make a written statement outlining our finances and how they got to where they are now. I was wondering if I could send it to you so you could proofread it and clean it up to sound professional."
I didn't want to. Not because I didn't want to help him but because he was about to let me in on a very private part of his life and I don't know that I should take on that burden. But I didn't have the heart to tell him it made me uncomfortable. Imagining the humility it must have taken for a grown man to ask for help from me, his employee, made me realize that he must have had no place else to go.
"Do you have an attorney?" I asked, thinking maybe the responsibility for legal script would best be left to someone who passed the Bar and not a kid with an BA in communications.
"No. I called one up and he told me that him being in court would make no difference and it would just be a waste of a couple thousand dollars."
The last straw broken, I said I would help. Divorce was a strange thing to me. I could not understand how a married couple could split so irrecoverably. Maybe it's because I understood the nature of hate, but not so much of love. I always thought of them as opposites, but now I wasn't sure. Darkness is the opposite of light because it is the absence of it but a life without love is not all hate. Maybe I confused the definition of love and it's many forms but it scared me that two people so close would suddenly not want to be.
That evening I spent time with my friends, Tom and Sean. We drove to a hole in the wall Mexican food place and decided to sit on some grass by an intersection and eat, bypassing stone tables. The sound of traffic and people meeting at crosswalks always made me feel alive, apart of humanity and it's passively chaotic beauty.
"So what's up with you and Katelyn?" Tom asked Sean.
"Well we broke up." he said.
"Yeah but you saw her last night," said Tom. "You spent the night even."
Sean smiled. We were older now but no more mature in some areas than the 14 year-old us.
"Yeah I spent the night and we... well, we had sex. We've been doing that a lot since we broke up or split up or whatever. In a lot of ways it's better, less of an obligation than it was getting to be. That's why we broke up, things were just feeling stale, but I know that I don't want to be with anyone else. I just had to pull myself out of it for a second. Find out if we both felt that way."
"Clearly you do," I said.
We laughed and ate some more. A man whistled to another man on a bike on the other side of the street. He rode over to him and they high-fived a greeting.
Around 9PM we drove to an apartment near a university. Our friend Brian proposed to his girlfriend last week and invited us to an engagement party to celebrate. We arrived to a small living room filled with 30 people. Lot's of pretty girls were there, smiling and congratulating the newly engaged.
One girl in particular was absolutely gorgeous. Her skin was so dark, darker than mine could get with years of sun. She wore a gray top and fitted jeans with flats and though I didn't know her at all, I instantly felt her energy. It made me self-conscious and aware that my physical shape was only one of many obstacles I would have to hurdle in order to have the slightest chance to even speak with her. I thought it better to try and ignore her.
"Um, thank you all so much for being here to celebrate with me and Brian," said Brian's fiance, her voice rising above the din of conversations.
"We wanted to tell everyone here the story of how Brian proposed to me..."
She laughed nervously, flushed from the champagne and wine we all drank. She told the story like someone recounting it for the first time, still after a week, feeling the gravity of the event. Every detail was told and retold while she backed over parts to fill in things she missed. Everyone in the room watched with a grin. None bigger than Brian's. I had never seen him so red and beaming with happiness. I think what I was seeing was love. It had been a strange day but I felt it here more than anywhere else.
Tom and Sean wanted to leave early, so I glanced one last time at my tawny party crush and walked outside to say goodbye to Brian and his fiance.
"I'm taking off Amber, congratulations have a great night," I said to the bride to be and we hugged. Wanting to say it but not knowing how to articulate it, I tried anyway. "I thought your story was great - it was beautiful, really."
"Oh thank you so much Evan, I'm really glad you guys could make it."
In the car on the ride home Tom and Sean spoke out loud.
"I definitely wouldn't have told my story to everyone like that." said Tom
"Yeah standing up in front of everyone like that would just be embarrassing." said Sean. "Plus I hate having parties in honor of myself, it's weird to me. I don't want everybody feeling obligated on my behalf."
"It was so long too." said Tom.
"I thought it was cool" I said. "They were happy to tell it I think."
"And then the people asking questions 'what were you thinking when he did this?'..." said Tom, ranting over my words. I kept silent while they played off of each other's criticisms of the party. The moon lit the freeway up like a fresh snow and I stared at my own reflection looking back at me from the right rear passenger window.
"Hey Evan you write a lot, right?" he said, his hemlock tinged breath seeping through cigarette yellowed teeth.
I said that I had.
"Well, my wife served me with divorce papers last night."
Shocked that I was hearing this, my heart sunk a little and I knew why he was such a subdued version of himself.
"She came in with a stone faced stare and handed them to me while I sat on my couch watching TV."
Why he was confiding in me was not clear. It was overwhelming and I didn't know what to say. He probably had children my age and to think that I could relate to him and sympathize on a legitimate level to match the problem would be incredulous.
"I'm so sorry Frank," I said staring at him directly. "That's terrible."
He smiled weakly, like an old dog straining to lift himself off of a backyard porch. "I've seen it coming for a while now, it was only a matter of time," he said.
"Oh, well... I'm really sorry," I said redundantly, searching for the wise sounding words I would give a friend in need but finding only simple, repeating sympathies.
"It's for the best I think," he said. "But that's why I asked if you wrote, I have to go to court to determine child support and I want to make a written statement outlining our finances and how they got to where they are now. I was wondering if I could send it to you so you could proofread it and clean it up to sound professional."
I didn't want to. Not because I didn't want to help him but because he was about to let me in on a very private part of his life and I don't know that I should take on that burden. But I didn't have the heart to tell him it made me uncomfortable. Imagining the humility it must have taken for a grown man to ask for help from me, his employee, made me realize that he must have had no place else to go.
"Do you have an attorney?" I asked, thinking maybe the responsibility for legal script would best be left to someone who passed the Bar and not a kid with an BA in communications.
"No. I called one up and he told me that him being in court would make no difference and it would just be a waste of a couple thousand dollars."
The last straw broken, I said I would help. Divorce was a strange thing to me. I could not understand how a married couple could split so irrecoverably. Maybe it's because I understood the nature of hate, but not so much of love. I always thought of them as opposites, but now I wasn't sure. Darkness is the opposite of light because it is the absence of it but a life without love is not all hate. Maybe I confused the definition of love and it's many forms but it scared me that two people so close would suddenly not want to be.
That evening I spent time with my friends, Tom and Sean. We drove to a hole in the wall Mexican food place and decided to sit on some grass by an intersection and eat, bypassing stone tables. The sound of traffic and people meeting at crosswalks always made me feel alive, apart of humanity and it's passively chaotic beauty.
"So what's up with you and Katelyn?" Tom asked Sean.
"Well we broke up." he said.
"Yeah but you saw her last night," said Tom. "You spent the night even."
Sean smiled. We were older now but no more mature in some areas than the 14 year-old us.
"Yeah I spent the night and we... well, we had sex. We've been doing that a lot since we broke up or split up or whatever. In a lot of ways it's better, less of an obligation than it was getting to be. That's why we broke up, things were just feeling stale, but I know that I don't want to be with anyone else. I just had to pull myself out of it for a second. Find out if we both felt that way."
"Clearly you do," I said.
We laughed and ate some more. A man whistled to another man on a bike on the other side of the street. He rode over to him and they high-fived a greeting.
Around 9PM we drove to an apartment near a university. Our friend Brian proposed to his girlfriend last week and invited us to an engagement party to celebrate. We arrived to a small living room filled with 30 people. Lot's of pretty girls were there, smiling and congratulating the newly engaged.
One girl in particular was absolutely gorgeous. Her skin was so dark, darker than mine could get with years of sun. She wore a gray top and fitted jeans with flats and though I didn't know her at all, I instantly felt her energy. It made me self-conscious and aware that my physical shape was only one of many obstacles I would have to hurdle in order to have the slightest chance to even speak with her. I thought it better to try and ignore her.
"Um, thank you all so much for being here to celebrate with me and Brian," said Brian's fiance, her voice rising above the din of conversations.
"We wanted to tell everyone here the story of how Brian proposed to me..."
She laughed nervously, flushed from the champagne and wine we all drank. She told the story like someone recounting it for the first time, still after a week, feeling the gravity of the event. Every detail was told and retold while she backed over parts to fill in things she missed. Everyone in the room watched with a grin. None bigger than Brian's. I had never seen him so red and beaming with happiness. I think what I was seeing was love. It had been a strange day but I felt it here more than anywhere else.
Tom and Sean wanted to leave early, so I glanced one last time at my tawny party crush and walked outside to say goodbye to Brian and his fiance.
"I'm taking off Amber, congratulations have a great night," I said to the bride to be and we hugged. Wanting to say it but not knowing how to articulate it, I tried anyway. "I thought your story was great - it was beautiful, really."
"Oh thank you so much Evan, I'm really glad you guys could make it."
In the car on the ride home Tom and Sean spoke out loud.
"I definitely wouldn't have told my story to everyone like that." said Tom
"Yeah standing up in front of everyone like that would just be embarrassing." said Sean. "Plus I hate having parties in honor of myself, it's weird to me. I don't want everybody feeling obligated on my behalf."
"It was so long too." said Tom.
"I thought it was cool" I said. "They were happy to tell it I think."
"And then the people asking questions 'what were you thinking when he did this?'..." said Tom, ranting over my words. I kept silent while they played off of each other's criticisms of the party. The moon lit the freeway up like a fresh snow and I stared at my own reflection looking back at me from the right rear passenger window.
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