Everywhere a pest
Everywhere a pest Thingometers for every organ and pills in every corner Here I forget my brother, my mother by the kitchen sink There is joy on the TV And the dragging of feet over tile and piss
reformed rationalist | aspiring degenerate
Everywhere a pest Thingometers for every organ and pills in every corner Here I forget my brother, my mother by the kitchen sink There is joy on the TV And the dragging of feet over tile and piss
Everything is clear – the air is crisp, the cold is cutting, but it has a sweetness to it, and the light is milky, the sounds are hazy, every scent is tainted with the Nag Champa in your lungs. In that moment, you know just what you want, just what you need to do, and you're glad of the rules you have to break to get it done. You're giddy – it feels like you're in a movie, and you do stupid, risky things, and somehow the world fails to collapse because of it. For a while you know you're safe, and there are no consequences, just an endless parade of danger.
The deathly quiet of sleeping people gives way To the morning air And my uncoagulated brain Floods my skull and thrums and coats my lungs And I breathe the vapor of my faculties On every atom of daylight
From the streets outside my door, not 10 minutes ago, came a series of broken wails and three short sequences of rapid fire pops followed by one last scream. I took me a few seconds to decide what it was that I’d heard, and a few seconds longer to rise to the window and try to catch a glimpse. I saw nothing and so sat on the floor by the window, listening in. Not two minutes later came the shrill song of a siren. I Googled news reports and came up short. I heard a dog bark, some cars rushed by, casual voices rang through the streets, some horns sounded complaints, the scent of rush hour settled in.
The car is running, Mary Beth, The soot is coming, Throw the beans in the trunk, And leave the furs out front,
Lovers are blithe, and weary with joy, and poised by ease. Wear on their soul marks the years, the untiring years, And when the tireless tire Their lies are honeyed and giving and true, “For I grow old and stale and bored,”
Now I am not alone, Just less, More abstract in mind, Less you or I than people, Fewer springs than seasons, Knowing less and being infinitely wiser.
The air is pale and worn
And lacking the essence of anything
But very modern and often brown
And public
And I wonder what I think about that
I grow old with the turn of a page
Learning the youth of other men
Who strained the virgin years
Of life untold
Never owing hope a second's worth
Of intermission.
“The human spirit was born when we dared to dream beyond death,” the fictional DJ at KBHR suggests in “Northern Exposure.” Optimism about the human condition is out of style, optimism about nature, even reality itself, is out of style. We place a very high premium on certainty and invariably take the engineer’s road over the mystic's. We believe mysteries are problems, solvable, boring little things, that there is a proposition-shaped answer to everything. We believe the mystic’s path is the same as the engineer’s, if it carries us forward, and otherwise, a dead end. The one who favors meaning over certainty is avoiding The Truth, that great tragedy we know to be bedrock, and it is obvious, we say, that if all the mysteries of life were solved by concrete, observable, communicable means, the mystical would be obsolete. Should we, with sufficient scientific cleverness, carry some semblance of consciousness beyond the boundaries of our flesh, mystery would be condemned here too – a balm for the heart, denying us the only solution to the ultimate problem. We’d best face the facts, sonny – truth alone is immortal. We collectively believe the human spirit was born out of our awareness of death.