Literature for Illiterates

Creeps crept throughout the crypt.

When they sleep, they peel the peels and eels

They sink below the plow and bows -no matter how high brow they think.

It keeps the creeps at the crypts.

Its thoughts are thorough and tough.

Its beliefs are brief and feeble.

It creeps through our thoughts – high brow and top hat.

It brings boxes out of the huts.

It waits and wants.

It wants what it haunts.

It hurts what it finally feels.

It claims and climbs the clovers.

Its’ dreams darken the lovers.

 

 

My first and only groupie entered my life when she mistook me for someone famous while she was without her glasses.

I’ve been there and it’s not such a fine place.

There are no crimes you can commit that I haven’t thought about doing myself.

Your yellow stained ceramics and fuchsia wallpaper still stand between me and the washroom.

Everyone has a death that fucked them up real good. Everything was going great – life was happening and all things good were happening too – and then boom, out of nowhere, someone in your life is taken from you. It is there, at that moment, you can pinpoint when things started going all wrong for you. It is the moment you keep reverting to when you are numb and want to feel something, or it is that moment that you feel the entire pain of the universe and wish it would just stop – the universe and/or the pain.

Each of us could blame a death for why we are messed up. We carry that person’s death with us for the rest of our lives.  The death never gets easier to accept and the heartache that comes with it never really disappears; it only gets interrupted by other distracting moments until our thoughts accidentally wander back to it again.

We feel the guilt. Why wasn’t I nicer to the deceased? Why wasn’t that person nicer to me? Why was this loved one taken from us? I could have done more to prevent the death. It’s all my fault. Yep, death has a way of ruining the rest of our lives.

The only reason people say “time heals all wounds” is because of the “inbox theory.”  Eventually the rest of the crap you’ve be ignoring while you’ve been contemplating your loss, piles up, waiting for you, and you’re forced to deal with these backlog of thoughts. At this point you are willing to accept all other introspections, so as to avoid all ponderings about your loss. But your mind always travels back to that missing soul. There is always a trigger that brings you back to that death; but nothing brings your beloved back or ever will. And that’s what’s fucked up about it.

 

 

I can’t lie about it anymore. Those aren’t blond hairs in my beard – they are definitely grey – or at the very least – white. I have fooled myself long enough and now I have to repair this problem before someone else discovers them. I steal the tweezers from my wife’s make-up case and start plucking. There are only 5 or 6 (maybe a dozen) hairs that stand out from my plush brown goatee. For each grey (white) hair I pull out, 5 brown hairs are removed accidentally with them. I leave a balding, bleeding patch in the tweezer’s wake. Perhaps if I shave off my beard I will be able to hide the damage those white hairs have done.

Time is a 70’s song, floating into the future. I’m yearning to be yearned and learning everything I ever unlearned. A moment has passed but not here.This may be one of those bad decisions that haunt me but who could ever tell? Not the hidden darkness. By the way if it’s “hidden darkness” how do you know where it is? My thoughts are penitently thinking about Penaten cream. My thoughts are mocking me. Be not afraid of open spaces or closed minds. Flattery is the sincerest form of imitation. I’m going back to play “Words with Friends.”

I awoke to bad poetry.

Door to door salesman offering me his poems that he created and self-published.  On display his self depreciating view of his world, his loves and his pain.  I can see no known value in this – I have my own pain and love and so do you.  He asks me for a few dollars so he can sit on my bookshelf next to Camus, Kafka, Orwell and Dan Brown. He asks me for some money to support the arts. I tell him no. By not buying your book I am actually supporting the arts. I am making sure no one will have to read volume 2 of your awful poetry.  I am killing the dream before it’s too late. Before you find out the truth that your friends who have been saying you write really well, do not want to hurt your feelings.  Your stuff sucks and that’s why you’re selling your own poems and no one is buying.

I wake up and I see that it is going to be another day. I am a viewer and I am waiting for any signs to prove me otherwise. What if this is all that is expected of me?

I cross the street and my fingers. I cross out the words from the Across column. I cross my t and dot my eyes. I cross my eyes and it is painless.

If you can - always stay on the edge,
it keeps people interested.
But never go over the edge,
you don't want to keep people too interested.

If you can, never give the people what they expect
or what they want - or even what they think they want or expect
because you are only truly remembered 
when you are a bastard.

If you can - be original.
Do not be a cliche or use cliches.
Try to use your own thoughts.
If you borrow an idea, make it uniquely yours.
Great minds think alike but so do sheep.

When you think you have reached the end,
do not quit, or even think about giving it all up since that will get you remembered,
but sadly it will get you remembered for the wrong thing.

Tame
 the sheep,
        the mule,
the child 
         and the earth.

Learning;
   the alphabet,
 that x = x,
  the zither,
the frail earth
 and that Jesus died for all of our sins
   except Patti Smith's.

Teaching;
  dishonest lessons to my children
                             and my earth   
        but they listen and believe
 what they are told.
     x = nul.

Time is repeatedly mismanaged
  so is logic and existence.
     We understand so very little
  and still teach what we know.