Beauty

Think, for a moment, of all the time wasted by men and women throughout history attempting to articulate the concept of beauty. There’s Pythagoras in pre-Socratic Greece, and his theories of beauty aligning with the golden ratio; beautiful math. The Renaissance brought about a lot of concepts on beauty, human, natural, man-made. Modern society has its own niches of beauty: children, flowers, Hallmark card sunsets, and simple laughter. But beyond these grandiose concepts of universal beauty, there is personal beauty, that is, within the eye of the beholder, as it is said. Experiences, blips of time that provide inner appreciation and adoration, for seemingly no reason but that it just is. This is what leads to my tale of sheer and utter beauty, the night the sky bled.              



One night in early summer, a few close friends and I took a trip to the beach. With fresh packs of cigarettes, a blanket, and heavy souls, we walked the cold sand down to the waterfront. We sat, and we talked. Our fears, our misery, our icy satisfaction in dissatisfaction all filling the air. And though the sea was black, out of spite it seemed, the need to brave it rose. How could we allow the natural world to conquer our torn hearts and minds?           


And so, we stood, men facing the horizon, lungs filled with sand, smoke, and adolescent determination. Some slowly, others face first, waded and dove in. The water a paradox: burning our skin. But as we walked out back to the sand, I felt something. Something that transcended the five senses. As my feet reached dry land, I started to understand just what had happened. My anxieties and vibrating worries were no more. My heart, my eyes, my being as a whole was cleansed. Reaffirmed within myself.              


And so we sat again. And talked again. Now our voices filled with optimism and hope. We looked back at the water, seeing our dark angst floating in the dark salty sea, our dread and panic drowning in the waters that had just saved us.                            


Maybe it was excitement, or my glasses just being caked in wet sand, but I took no notice of the moon the entire night. Luna and I have a bit of a relationship, her playing the role of the intellectual’s temptress, and I her stubborn love. So perhaps she grew jealous that I did not look for her at any point during my soul’s rebirth. She wanted my attention, and now she was willing to give more of herself than ever before. She pulled up her metaphoric dress a bit, flashing those metaphoric thighs in metaphoric lace.            



It started as a dot on the horizon. A tiny red scrap of light peeping out from the edge of the night. Before ten minutes had passed, the scrap had turned to the top of a burning disc. Another ten minutes, and we realized what we were watching. The moon, the color of a cigarette’s burning end and consuming a quarter of the horizon, was rising from the underworld, from underground. We sat, awestruck. No one could move, speak, and blinking quickly became a diminishing return. Alone on a beach in central New Jersey, rooted to the sand, watching seemingly innocent pale white Luna beam at us, burn at us, smirk at us.                    


As I attempted to articulate anything in that moment, it quickly became apparent of just how impossible that was. The night as a whole, every moment of it all, was pure beauty. My heart being lost in darkness, then finding light, and then seeing the natural world throw everything askew. My tongue, usually with the wit of a true scoundrel, was tied down. My soul was floating in the ether of amazement, my existence made worthwhile simply for the experience. That evening and its events are forever solidified as purely and utterly beautiful.

college

Dope with the horses,
irish boy's drunk,
meltmeltmelt these spindly thoughts
hell boys here on earth
skeletal fingers scrape
...these wily smokey roots
prophets all us who stand
in vintage leather boots
here bricks, there dust
we waste this time
smoking fluorescents
always only waiting for the wine
strange it is,
hornet stings to the chest,
smokestack hilltop
in absurdity let us rest.

underground

follow the man blowing smoke at waves
he's dancing with Luna, he's proving he's brave
scoundrels visit the beach only at night
your floor's our ceiling and that's alright
underground ain't underwater
we breathe your air and we smoke with your daughters
we watch the world and we watch you
we see all the stupid shit you can do
but we're sick you see, the fatal plague
of thought's in us, what a shame

here and there

One could pick men, boys, like us off a tree.
The saying goes a dime a dozen, no?
Strange to wake up drunk, having fallen asleep sober, somber-
Or maybe belligerence is a philosophy, a mindset, rather than a chemical result.
I’ve been a chemist for years, suicide driven science gets you far,
all in silent, babbling place.
It’s about time to pick my feet up and see what’s down the street,
here and there, here and there.
But for now? We’ll sit, ramble and light up our souls with empty fulfillment.
Hurrah for the underground, after all. Hurrah.

Paper Hearts

While he’s asking what’s inside her head,
he knows she’s told him too much he didn’t know.
And here I am, too sure of what’s in yours.
Even the birds can’t keep up with that tail-shaking,
how can I? My vision’s blurred by these sarcastic paper hearts,
spiteful mementos of a month ago. It seems longer,
sure, but we burned out quick. And now,
my chest is burning, whiskey instead of you.
Forever together is a nice notion, but a laugh is quicker to please.
Please me, please.

Waltz

With these constant dreams of falling,
I hear you've found your calling.
Dirty fingers make you hip like them,
eat their fruit off of their stem.
We're dancing on lumber, one-two-turn,
the radio tells me that I should burn.
You'd laugh at the notion, spare me the time,
an hour's a nickel, a day is a dime.
The ink's in your mouth, you're ready to talk,
and once these eyes bleed, I'll take a blind man's walk.
The snakes on your skin smile,
the poison they spit is too vile.
I can't carve this mask out of air,
so give me some effort, an infant of care.
And if fog is a heavy cloud,
bear your burden and please your crowd.
Battery acid in Peter's lake,
I'm going for a swim until I'm awake.
Let physics do its magic, I'll watch from here-
What a queer year on this sphere.

A Dissertation on the Morals of Scoundrels

For reasons completely justified and understandable, our society has no respect for people such as I, and even wish, for the most part, that we were not around in the first place. And why wouldn’t they feel like this! They themselves, their daughters, sons, nephews, and cousins all pour their hearts into the community, act as selfless martyrs to the world, and I sit and lazily look on, no real good to anyone. But! Have I, or should I say we, as there are more, I assure you, not gotten to a place in society, evolution, culture, and decency to allow the sinful selfish to do as they please, and especially without criticism from any high horses? If not, then we surely do not live as comfortably as we assume.

We often get asked to change, begged by the enlightened to join, told by authorities it’s what must be done. But why? We scoundrels live by a very moral code, you see. We’re as decent as possible, not allowing our own decisions to bother anyone. So in this case, it seems we scoundrels have something a little more figured out than those social elite. We at least don’t push our opinions on life and living onto the disinterested masses! We instead choose to burrow in our own miserable satisfaction and mutter about something.

This life that we’re involuntarily born into is a short strange blip of gases, lights, and a few memories; an odd experience, to say the least, no? And I, among others, again, I’m sure, have adopted a philosophy of moments. Accepting a prompt from something, someone, anyone, anything, and deciding there and then the proper action to compliment it. This is what has me doing my service late, this is what made my academia spoil, and this is what has me living life the only way it makes sense. My comfort derives from my general discomfort, you see!

And so, I’ll continue to be the scoundrel I choose, and somehow manage to get by within the structure that I’m in, be it school, work, conversation, society, or among the living, or of this world! I prefer my solutions to create new problems, and as long as only I’m being, you might say, punished, and no one else suffers, then I think that this is an acceptable way for me to continue. Though, even if it were unacceptable, it’d be my way, and so, of course, the right way. For me, at least.

I stand on honest ground, even if my toes might be muddied and scratched. And I’ll take these bleeding feet over mindless conformity any day.

Greedy Bees

I know that as you groped her face
your fingers were stained from
the cigarettes you rolled.
Her flesh withered with
every greedy touch.

A wax smile dripping
from your lips,
keep her from the beehives you weave,
keep her from the bees.

The Gentleman

Does the gentleman notice the sky
when his eyes roll with the trains?
Or does he lose himself in the commerce
of graffiti and architecture?
He smirks at the Jewish clowns,
averts eyes with people destined
for Co-op city, and pushes his chest
into the sickly air for a smile
from a young princess.
He flies on the sweat of engineers
and lectures on a detox of the ghetto.
What's a volunteer in a Calvin Klein suit?
A cockroach with a fashion sense.

An Invitation

I’m the kind of guy
who invites people to his own funeral-
it’ll be an upscale production, I assure you.
Am I dark? Hardly. Simply a realist.
(One who wants the proper crowd at his demise)
I tried to invite some acceptable guests to my birth,
but seeing as the doctor was a spiteful bastard-
we had met in a previous life-
the embossed cards never went out.
So give me control of this, at the least.

The Ballad of the New House

At first, a second house seemed exciting. There’d be boxes, moving trucks, and eyes for something new. Maybe I even thought it would be a roof that the puzzle-piece family would accept and collect under; a picture’s only whole under the right light, after all. There was a pool, a fireplace, a sauna built into the basement. A vacation house as a home, it seemed.

We would visit on weekends, admire the space that was lacking in our townhouse, and began furnishing the place. Leather couches, two big screen TVs – the pride of Japan – and a billiard table for drunken egotism to shine. But then we forgot about it. About it all. And five, six, seven years later, it remained “the new house.” A joke, I suppose, though we rarely laughed anymore. Any of us.

I began hating the place. Every layer of dust was a sign of neglect, to the house, to common sense, and to me. Ex-boyfriends of the former sleazy Russian inhabitants left violent, threatening voicemails, and once someone with half a thought noticed the lack of occupancy, the two televisions were stolen. The new house lost its charm and became a hassle, an annoyance, and a hollow reminder of failure.

Six years in, and six months into my friendship with Dennis, he caught mention of the place, “You’ve got a totally empty house?”

I hated even talking about the place, “Well, it’s furnished, but we just haven’t moved in yet.”

He was obviously struck by the concept, as a change in topic of conversation became impossible, “Let’s fucking go there, man! Party mansion!”

Exactly what I worked to avoid – word spreading that I had a deserted house, clearly a ticket to suburban underage drinking.

“Absolutely not,” I proclaimed, not looking up from rolling a Bugler cigarette, “I don’t need drunk bastards wrecking the place.” This was especially a concern as Dennis had a history of learning of his yesterdays tomorrow. “Find your own intoxicant palace.”

He was stubborn, “I did. Now let’s go.”

Max and Jake, brothers with whom I spent all my time, were on board with the plan immediately. The anti-Semitic Albanians I worked with bought me the beer and vodka.

And so began the culture, tradition, and romance of the new house. Alcohol, cigarettes, brotherhood, marijuana, teenage nihilism, LSD, amphetamine, and a strange understanding of the oasis that we lived in.

Sometimes we talked about love:

“I think, I think love is like some sort of massive…respect,” I’d say.

“Exactly. I’ll go with you on that. When me and Tina were together it was this naïve symbiotic…” Max would say, his mouth gnawing on itself, speed in his blood and in his eyes.

Jake and Dennis would dissect hip-hop for hours, both too drunk to admit it.

When Marcus from school would come by, we’d discuss politics, culture, and human nature:

“…And since it developed the way it did, isn’t that exactly how it had to be?” he would ask, eyes wide with anticipation of an answer.

I would follow, “But think of all the tiny trivial events, God knows which ones, that made it that way. Isn’t that just fucked up?”

And Max played the devil’s advocate sometimes, pondering impossible ideas, “But who says any of that happened? If we’re perceiving a certain event differently from our fucking history textbooks, then isn’t that reality, to me at least?”

Hours upon hours of conversation, lost to the walls of the house, thrown out in cigarette butts over the fence.

Silence carried its own beauty too. Waking up on the fifth morning of a five night drinking binge before anyone else, there would be that silent, grossly bright-sky cigarette on the deck, accepting the hangover I deserved. Lamentations of the past few days, all chemically fused into one, and pure bliss at the beauty of the nothingness of it all.

This continued for a summer. And then weekends of the new school year. Faces changed, came, stayed, went. It was all the same.

The new house is hardly new anymore, but despite all, I still can barely stand the place. I still remember the neglect, the house that was the punch-line to some cosmic joke. But these people here with me, restless brothers and sisters within these walls, laugh together.

I guess I’ve found the right light for this picture of mine.

Dances with Dead Presidents

Aristocratic arithmetic shoots through the Middle East
Holy lands morph their shrines, make way for the priest!

He'll feed you syringes, sex, and avian flu
His concubines will dance and leave your balls blue

Ballot cast, vote vote vote, John Smith must win
Careful though, these wolves would gladly eat their kin.

They'll get you to buy their loud safety rated car
Big Brother no longer only has to watch from afar.

Text books, Bibles, pamphlets of medical use
Lose them all! And add some rum to your child's juice

Lewis Carol giggled, and tripped through Wonderland
Now he can't buy anything that isn't government brand

This massive takeover, psychiatrists parade the street
Lobotomies for everyone, for a price you just can't beat!

Drinking my sewage, I need vitamins A and C
The Chinese give up, sip their pure green tea.

Advertised religion, on Costco's payroll since Jesus
Steve Jobs reads his sermon, makes sense of all of this.

There's a whole big world, where the all lemmings land
Science is at the scene, already taking command.

Space's frontier is bought up in international political greed
And for your health, mind and soul, please smoke some good weed.

Rumor spreads to Washington of Ohio hiding gas
Now Iraqis stake claim - irony up the ass.

Dead presidents rise, ask to ballroom dance
Terrorist housewives get lost within the trance.

The Russians, Church, and junk dealers hold hands and kiss
As society altogether dies deep in an abyss.

Living here, it's all moments, freaks, and words
You'll always step in shit but keep your head with the birds.

Self Reflection with Oscar

Something wild told me sin is taking advice,
tainting my pure comfy cotton candy spirit-
a rather queer wild thing that one is-
If so, Dante didn't think big enough in his Inferno,
he hadn't met me.

Cut open my gut and you'll find yellowed pages,
reels of film, and a liver that drowned during an overdose
before I was of age.

But if there is no hope,
an autobiography of confession seems immoral,
then let me smoke my skin dry,
and at least I'll smile,
until these Cro-Magnon teeth of mine off themselves.

I'm a product of immigration and imagination,
with faith in faithlessness.
The wild things fester in civility, and I'm a victim.
At least I'm drunk.

Forgetful

Where in Arizona is Eliza's howling wolf?
She's forgotten the ditch where the moonlight looks over his half-eaten bones.
What if I wake up under her window?
What if I want her furniture burned?

The sky has some white streaks that laugh at me;
why don't they know about how a dig gets so dirty?
It's the condition that's giving me a rash, not your makeup.

Maybe the museum's door is closed for a reason.
Marble tiles wash away dirt real easy, my boots get forgot real quick.

And if some machinery wraps around a tree, does the irony go out the window
with your purse? Or with my dignity, at least?
If some afternoon dreams can step on the toes of faith,
what hope is there for a ticking clock lifestyle?

Let yourself drown in wet cigarettes, foggy and grey.

Nothing in life is free but the cheese in the trap, you told me.
Only it was across the bridge. The water might have muddied your intent.

Spend your time asking the fish rather than me, that's all good and well.
When the cinema's gone, where can you go? Not my home,
or ours.

Maybe it takes cold to the brain to be tranquil.

Creationist Musings

People, I’m told, were made perfect,
by God, his holy self.
And in his image he did make us,
pink and brown silly little elves.
And so if he and I are so similar,
then he must, like I
drop his pants once in a while
and let the brown ones slip by.
I shit in the morning,
sometimes the afternoon,
but God’s scale must be different
when he busts out his full moon.
Mine splash in the water,
and poof they’re gone.
His probably have more impact,
some bad Mexican, and you’ve got Armageddon.