Anarchy never worked out, since the people who led us to paradise immediate declared themselves leaders for having led us there. Paradise needs borders to protect it from the Wastes, and who better to enforce the borders than the strong, an A in a circle like a scarlet letter sewn onto their jackets. Bicycles are more sincere than cars, since those legs are pushing you there. (Normally the feet are running and the nose is smelling, but these days the feet are smelly and the nose is running) It's like the golden rule applied to Fixie gears: you get out what you put into it, though didnt we have those when we were five years old, riding circles around the Powerwheelers in their rattly three wheeled vehicles? If any high school kids protest, emulate the Hipster King of the Springs: get off your bike and ask if they want a piece of you! Maybe they called you 'faggot' because you wore bike shorts and a helmet for a simple errand to the local coffeehouse. Do we really have to support local businesses when the owners are snooty, mean people who would rather be alone with their pointless degrees? (Take note, bitter graduates!)
The bicycle thief approaches the pick up truck and waits until the family is inside, then snatches the prize from the back. A nice mountain bike worth several hundred dollars. All that is required is a new coat of paint and nobody will know, except for the victim, who will have a sense of loss of course. But that's his fault for subscribing to the capitalist plague: find yourself the prey of the idealists. The idealists with limitless dreams and vague realities. The Bicycle Thief, officially graduated to capital letters, flaunts his bike all the way up Pikes Peak and back, well, it is a scenario visualized in a pot cloud floating between Manitou and Old Colorado City. Actually, every time he walks by the pawn shop, he notices the supply and the demand. But don't call him a tweaker, he doesnt do speed, just a little crack in the van parked outside Bar Bar. It's okay, didnt Johnny Cash do all that too? Any drug featured in a song title produces a ghostly soundtrack that calms the conscience and reinforces the riffs.
Bicycle Thief, full of free vegan dinners, speeds around corners like a messenger, with no message to convey of course. Judge a man by the food of his feast, chewing on the plants and sparing the beast. Of course the animals receive the kindness, and fellow humans can handle the scorn. Backyard of stolen bikes, couches of sloppy girls combing the lice from their legs, amateur musicians who get into drunken rages after a half hour of unsuccessful tuning. The family in the pick up truck gets a little disappointed and quiet. What do you expect, this is the Jail City. Everyone has been to prison, or is preparing for the cell. Can you pick your cellmates? Can you pick your nose? Can you pick your cellmates nose? Whiskey and crack on the end table, I am the biggest victim of my own addictions. I could write a song, but on the other hand, the songs of open mic are easily transcribed. The nice girl in the kitchen can sew patches on pretty well, but sewing up the holes in your jeans isnt a good idea when you want everyone to see the bruises always translucent and open, and speaking soft songs of blood everytime you get up to chase away the dog.
Monday, April 14, 2008
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
The Bitter Graduate Takes His Pulse and Slows It Down Somehow
Ah, bitter graduate, fold up your degree very delicately, it's worth so much even ten years after the procession, not to be confused with a funeral.. though maybe it was the death of comfort? No more dorming. At least no more fake tolerance of the student body. Now free of class and text, out into the big world to find a job. Well.. you can still work internships! Run for your life! Anything to avoid a dayjob!
Bitter graduates of all shapes, colors, and girths. Varying shades of coffee stains on white oxford button ups. The journalism majors get kicked out of their low-paying paper, and attempt some creed called "do it yourself". Except the actual punk rockers and alcoholic anarchists, who have all done it themselves, mostly screwed it up themselves, undone it themselves, well they find the Bitter Graduate a little too affected. The male is too affected, the female is too affectionate. Both fake. The music majors enshrine their theory books, they visualise your voice as notes on the clef, they listen to their used car motors in terms of beats and measures. When the high school teaching job fails to materialize, and the elementary school dislikes your grip on the maracas, well might as well start a band. it will be the best band ever.. except that no other bandmate wants to study the essentials with you, and the band breaks up on a particularly bad power trip. Nobody has time for music lessons when the neon bar sign lights up, and the girls with the gummy smiles are buying two Blue Ribbons for the next shampoo-haired savage to come along and attempt the next pickup line on the list.
Art majors.. english majors.. bitter graduates in tweed blazers, smoking pipes, cabbie hats cocked low over the eyes as they peruse Dylan Thomas at the bar of the cafe. Bar of the cafe. Yes the cafe serves beer, but in a wine glass. And you tell me about "busking" in Europe, and I have no idea what busking is, and all you say is "you dont know what busking is" as if we are in a sitcom scene, one of those new sitcoms, with unfunny deadpan humor, and pleated dockers hiding shaved bicyclist legs. You dont know what busking is. No I dont, and apparently, not knowing disqualifies me from ever knowing. If you dont have anything nice to say, mumble it instead? Or maybe just think it really loud. Just dont disturb the telepaths in the witchs circle in the woods, they may tip over your booklamp and the words will fall off the page, blown in the breeze of the Japanese paper fan you got from the Japanese neighborhood of town.
The Bitter Graduate runs through the park as the hobos simmer soup on the hot tennis court asphalt, he runs away from the dayjob, the approaching dayjob, he recites slang he read in the latest New Yorker glossary, in his mind he wears a monocle and a top hat, and inspects a bird, the magazine's title is a plaque on his desk, describing who he is, or will be someday. The Bitter Graduate struggles always for the first line of the great novel, the great poem, then comes home and comes into his fat girlfriend. She farts gently and beautifully in her sleep, mumbling out gems that go unnoticed by potato farm ears. She writes alot better than he, but knows to keep it a secret. Her creative writing portfolio is hidden under the dresser, collecting dust. She's got the job in the industry because she knows how to commandeer a rolling chair, how to file the documents, how to write up employees, how to fire the daydreamers. The Bitter Graduate has nightmares of data entry and dishwashing, unless it is source material for a great manuscript.
Actually the manuscript is almost done, in his head. The day he puts his pen to paper, or finger to keyboard, is the day when whiskey will flow like piss into his mouth, and cocaine floats into his nose like fresh flower pollen, germinating little dreams. The Bitter Graduate adjusts his belt and checks his reflection. His skin is coming loose from his bones, the looks that never were now never will be, and if the body is no more, then the mind must dominate. Now is the time to take wild Power Trips to the top. At least if he makes it to the top of the ladder, when death comes his body will fall like 9-11 suicides, unless he takes his bones with him to heaven, as a bribe for the angels already jealous of flesh and its secular, sexual pleasures.
Bitter graduates of all shapes, colors, and girths. Varying shades of coffee stains on white oxford button ups. The journalism majors get kicked out of their low-paying paper, and attempt some creed called "do it yourself". Except the actual punk rockers and alcoholic anarchists, who have all done it themselves, mostly screwed it up themselves, undone it themselves, well they find the Bitter Graduate a little too affected. The male is too affected, the female is too affectionate. Both fake. The music majors enshrine their theory books, they visualise your voice as notes on the clef, they listen to their used car motors in terms of beats and measures. When the high school teaching job fails to materialize, and the elementary school dislikes your grip on the maracas, well might as well start a band. it will be the best band ever.. except that no other bandmate wants to study the essentials with you, and the band breaks up on a particularly bad power trip. Nobody has time for music lessons when the neon bar sign lights up, and the girls with the gummy smiles are buying two Blue Ribbons for the next shampoo-haired savage to come along and attempt the next pickup line on the list.
Art majors.. english majors.. bitter graduates in tweed blazers, smoking pipes, cabbie hats cocked low over the eyes as they peruse Dylan Thomas at the bar of the cafe. Bar of the cafe. Yes the cafe serves beer, but in a wine glass. And you tell me about "busking" in Europe, and I have no idea what busking is, and all you say is "you dont know what busking is" as if we are in a sitcom scene, one of those new sitcoms, with unfunny deadpan humor, and pleated dockers hiding shaved bicyclist legs. You dont know what busking is. No I dont, and apparently, not knowing disqualifies me from ever knowing. If you dont have anything nice to say, mumble it instead? Or maybe just think it really loud. Just dont disturb the telepaths in the witchs circle in the woods, they may tip over your booklamp and the words will fall off the page, blown in the breeze of the Japanese paper fan you got from the Japanese neighborhood of town.
The Bitter Graduate runs through the park as the hobos simmer soup on the hot tennis court asphalt, he runs away from the dayjob, the approaching dayjob, he recites slang he read in the latest New Yorker glossary, in his mind he wears a monocle and a top hat, and inspects a bird, the magazine's title is a plaque on his desk, describing who he is, or will be someday. The Bitter Graduate struggles always for the first line of the great novel, the great poem, then comes home and comes into his fat girlfriend. She farts gently and beautifully in her sleep, mumbling out gems that go unnoticed by potato farm ears. She writes alot better than he, but knows to keep it a secret. Her creative writing portfolio is hidden under the dresser, collecting dust. She's got the job in the industry because she knows how to commandeer a rolling chair, how to file the documents, how to write up employees, how to fire the daydreamers. The Bitter Graduate has nightmares of data entry and dishwashing, unless it is source material for a great manuscript.
Actually the manuscript is almost done, in his head. The day he puts his pen to paper, or finger to keyboard, is the day when whiskey will flow like piss into his mouth, and cocaine floats into his nose like fresh flower pollen, germinating little dreams. The Bitter Graduate adjusts his belt and checks his reflection. His skin is coming loose from his bones, the looks that never were now never will be, and if the body is no more, then the mind must dominate. Now is the time to take wild Power Trips to the top. At least if he makes it to the top of the ladder, when death comes his body will fall like 9-11 suicides, unless he takes his bones with him to heaven, as a bribe for the angels already jealous of flesh and its secular, sexual pleasures.
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Brooklyn in the Brain
Brooklyn still exists more vividly in the imagination then in reality, since the Notorious BIG passed away after pissing blood. The Midwesterners who now rent his childhood apartment pour out Forties from paper bags, recycled paper bags, better for the environment, in memory of an ethnic past (inspiration for a painted and written future). Reruns of Goodfellas, with dishwashing liquid commercials between the beatings, fuels your brain, marooned on the couch. Bands from the year of the Space Odyssey, the monoliths of music that Arthur C Clarke could only vaguely dream of as he picked the pollen from his nose (as the Sri Lankans traded their saris for semi automatics) were Karen O, Liars, other dancing rockers, band names of punctuation, the "The" revolution in bandnames.. all makes a heart sigh and set sights for Brooklyn.
When is it too late to start again? In your thirties, do you pack up the furniture and heirlooms and rent a u-haul east coast bound? Park Slope is the nicest, the hipsters with baby carraiges.. they never moved back home, they only write about home, and how unsophisticated it is. Brooklyn, the furthest east you're willing to go sans crossing the Atlantic for Barcelona, then Paris, the Berlin. Old street art lines the concrete walls, while new graffiti art goes straight to the gallery walls (just like straight to video? vhs, the 99 cent medium, takes a while to rewind, but might as well savor that silent quality time). Sure the founders of the Liberal Arts borough have left for greener pastures, well not greener, just more Southern, towards the equator. The cheap rents of Baltimore and Philadelphia and Raleigh, where the native Blacks still roam, chasing buffalo, slowly embracing skateboarding. Do they all really listen to hiphop and know about the Four Elements of BBoy culture? Not too sure about that, but you're not too sure about anything, that's why you moved away in the first place (to become last place in the new competition!)
The local college sends about 50 kids, mostly girls in baggy primary-colored tights and snowboarding vests, to live the Brooklyn "experience" over the summer. Now that the reasons for Brooklyn's prominence have fled south, we worship a memory, the first sighting of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, the first dance move to a drum machine by an ironically-minded graphic designer, the first photocopied flyer, the bloodstains of a Liars concert, the first digital photos by an asian photography student. Seven years since the Strokes broke out of the millionaire's ghetto, shows in the state universities, and audiences of ugly girls in pretty dresses.. shotgun haircuts, Luxx parties with Larry Tee in helium voice.. the "Frontier" is crown heights and bushwick, where intrepid trappers are still ambushed by the native species. Five credit cards per holdup, keep your receipts. The streets are filled with the same types who gawk at Manhattan skyscrapers, this time amazed across the river by the view of the skyline, the view from the rooftop martini bar.
Are you too old to be moving there? How will your children adapt? Previously prancing from rock to rock in the foothills, wearing superhero costumes for fun, keeping it to a whisper when your dad's favorite NPR show hits the digital airwaves. Plump radio station DJs give you the okay, you'll do great there, since you didn't do so great here. At least New York City will understand you, it has to, it already understands serveral hundred languages right? Your literary thoughts are less than literal, but at least in the tall cities they respect the disrespected, the loners, the bitter graduates (ah, the bitter graduates, busy drinking and nostalgic for their degrees, wait until age 30 when your skin comes loose from your skeleton, then looks and love are sacrificed for force and farce) They'll love you in Park Slope. Not sure how your offspring will do... I don't think the youngsters there care that he was the little darling of the sterile gallery girls. The plastic sword broken in half, the S ripped from his chest, the cub scout badges buried under the beautiful blanket of northeastern autumn foliage. At least the digital photos and videos were backed up several times over for safekeeping, archived on the internet.
The man who moved West from Brooklyn.. well he went East from West originally a while back, so he's from out here really, but he doesn't say that. He says he is from Brooklyn, well its most recently Brooklyn, technically. But technicalities are irrelevant to inspiration, right? He represents Brooklyn. He says you'll love it. There are some great fences and warehouses there. That's enough to rejoice, enough to relocate, to remove.
Ignore the young kid who just moved back home, from a bad month in New York City, broke, his five o clock shadow a nine o clock silhouette, almost an 11 o clock night.. he's back to work, making food, smoking pot, keeping quiet. He is not your future, he wasn't hard enough, mean enough, ambitious enough for the Big Apple. You've got the hate and bitterness to survive there with the other exiles. You're not an asshole, it's just that they can't handle it here. The big city is grey, so remember to bring some pretty colors from the mountains and the meadows (they need it there). Bulletproof baby carraiges, screaming subways, no problem. Read the New York Post with your eyes closed, since all the sentences are in capital letters. In Instant Messenger land, that is akin to shouting!
Meanwhile another family from the famous five boroughs buys a house on the Plains. Finally escaping the metropolis and leaving a room for rent, for you, for your loved ones, to lock yourselves inside, since in NYC, it's all about your room, your refuge, your safety. The stress will be romantic. Middle age crisis less of a crisis than an oppurtunity. Remind your wife to carry her purse inside her jacket, and remind your son to keep his visions of mountains in his eyes. No eye contact with anyone on the train. They will take the mountains from his eyes, for certain. The will reach out from their black jackets and grab the sky from his pupils. They will pick the irises from the garden of his face. Colors are a rare commodity in the concrete architecture, and it costs almost 10 dollars nowadays for a movie, so might as well get the colors for free from your son.
Memorize the flowers before you leave, so in your dreams they will grow taller than any disintegrated towers were. Did you know in the penthouses they wear spacesuits? It's life in the top levels. That's still pretty short compared to the Peak's summit, but mountains are stupid, right? Stupid and pretty, like most girls out here.
When is it too late to start again? In your thirties, do you pack up the furniture and heirlooms and rent a u-haul east coast bound? Park Slope is the nicest, the hipsters with baby carraiges.. they never moved back home, they only write about home, and how unsophisticated it is. Brooklyn, the furthest east you're willing to go sans crossing the Atlantic for Barcelona, then Paris, the Berlin. Old street art lines the concrete walls, while new graffiti art goes straight to the gallery walls (just like straight to video? vhs, the 99 cent medium, takes a while to rewind, but might as well savor that silent quality time). Sure the founders of the Liberal Arts borough have left for greener pastures, well not greener, just more Southern, towards the equator. The cheap rents of Baltimore and Philadelphia and Raleigh, where the native Blacks still roam, chasing buffalo, slowly embracing skateboarding. Do they all really listen to hiphop and know about the Four Elements of BBoy culture? Not too sure about that, but you're not too sure about anything, that's why you moved away in the first place (to become last place in the new competition!)
The local college sends about 50 kids, mostly girls in baggy primary-colored tights and snowboarding vests, to live the Brooklyn "experience" over the summer. Now that the reasons for Brooklyn's prominence have fled south, we worship a memory, the first sighting of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, the first dance move to a drum machine by an ironically-minded graphic designer, the first photocopied flyer, the bloodstains of a Liars concert, the first digital photos by an asian photography student. Seven years since the Strokes broke out of the millionaire's ghetto, shows in the state universities, and audiences of ugly girls in pretty dresses.. shotgun haircuts, Luxx parties with Larry Tee in helium voice.. the "Frontier" is crown heights and bushwick, where intrepid trappers are still ambushed by the native species. Five credit cards per holdup, keep your receipts. The streets are filled with the same types who gawk at Manhattan skyscrapers, this time amazed across the river by the view of the skyline, the view from the rooftop martini bar.
Are you too old to be moving there? How will your children adapt? Previously prancing from rock to rock in the foothills, wearing superhero costumes for fun, keeping it to a whisper when your dad's favorite NPR show hits the digital airwaves. Plump radio station DJs give you the okay, you'll do great there, since you didn't do so great here. At least New York City will understand you, it has to, it already understands serveral hundred languages right? Your literary thoughts are less than literal, but at least in the tall cities they respect the disrespected, the loners, the bitter graduates (ah, the bitter graduates, busy drinking and nostalgic for their degrees, wait until age 30 when your skin comes loose from your skeleton, then looks and love are sacrificed for force and farce) They'll love you in Park Slope. Not sure how your offspring will do... I don't think the youngsters there care that he was the little darling of the sterile gallery girls. The plastic sword broken in half, the S ripped from his chest, the cub scout badges buried under the beautiful blanket of northeastern autumn foliage. At least the digital photos and videos were backed up several times over for safekeeping, archived on the internet.
The man who moved West from Brooklyn.. well he went East from West originally a while back, so he's from out here really, but he doesn't say that. He says he is from Brooklyn, well its most recently Brooklyn, technically. But technicalities are irrelevant to inspiration, right? He represents Brooklyn. He says you'll love it. There are some great fences and warehouses there. That's enough to rejoice, enough to relocate, to remove.
Ignore the young kid who just moved back home, from a bad month in New York City, broke, his five o clock shadow a nine o clock silhouette, almost an 11 o clock night.. he's back to work, making food, smoking pot, keeping quiet. He is not your future, he wasn't hard enough, mean enough, ambitious enough for the Big Apple. You've got the hate and bitterness to survive there with the other exiles. You're not an asshole, it's just that they can't handle it here. The big city is grey, so remember to bring some pretty colors from the mountains and the meadows (they need it there). Bulletproof baby carraiges, screaming subways, no problem. Read the New York Post with your eyes closed, since all the sentences are in capital letters. In Instant Messenger land, that is akin to shouting!
Meanwhile another family from the famous five boroughs buys a house on the Plains. Finally escaping the metropolis and leaving a room for rent, for you, for your loved ones, to lock yourselves inside, since in NYC, it's all about your room, your refuge, your safety. The stress will be romantic. Middle age crisis less of a crisis than an oppurtunity. Remind your wife to carry her purse inside her jacket, and remind your son to keep his visions of mountains in his eyes. No eye contact with anyone on the train. They will take the mountains from his eyes, for certain. The will reach out from their black jackets and grab the sky from his pupils. They will pick the irises from the garden of his face. Colors are a rare commodity in the concrete architecture, and it costs almost 10 dollars nowadays for a movie, so might as well get the colors for free from your son.
Memorize the flowers before you leave, so in your dreams they will grow taller than any disintegrated towers were. Did you know in the penthouses they wear spacesuits? It's life in the top levels. That's still pretty short compared to the Peak's summit, but mountains are stupid, right? Stupid and pretty, like most girls out here.
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