catching yawns

He sat. Chain smoking. Cigarette after cigarette. Smoking, smoking, smoking. "I think I'll do another cigarette." Just seconds after fidgetingly ashing out the prior. The new stick hanging from his mouth in the nonchalant manner that smokers use with unlit cigarettes, his lips slightly askew and the white paper wrapping of the cigarette just miraculously stuck to top and bottom lip and not touching any teeth - not to mention the lips so dry and pale and sort of stuck together themselves. He striked the match - 'fitlt' and the tiny roar of yellow orange. Staring then for just an instant at the fire atop the lit match. Entranced and oblivious to everything - absolutely everything else - eyebrows involuntarily lift ever so slightly. "Eh. The anticipation of a com- a coming peace. A minor consolation, I know, but like a sort of solace anyway." He spoke quickly through the stick. Tightening his lips' grip on the stick, he brings both hands to his face, the right - holding the lit match - more slowly. Inhaling no, sucking, hard to ignite...a 7mm bright red circle. The stylus had just begun to touch 'Hyacinth House'.

He had this way of rubbing the top right side of his scalp furiously with the inside of his right thumb as he held the stick extended away from the head with the two first fingers. Closing his eyes when he made his points, "the thing is...". His face was just a desiccated cow's hide. "The thing is...why, what do you think about it? About all this?"
"..."
"I think I'll do another cigarette."

Have you ever really watched someone smoke? Closely? The ridiculous battle with the slightest of breezes to keep a lighter or match lit long enough to ignite the cigarette. Or even worse, the putrid tip-to-tip use of another's already lit cigarette to light. The manner in which the stick smolders in between index and middle finger in the downtime between inhales. Emitting black/yellow/brown smoke all over hand and shirtsleeve, staining also the fingernails. The spasmodic flicking of the bottom of the stick with the back of the thumb to ash the tip - an uncontrollable tic. That eyes-closed instant after inhale where they rhythmically hold the inhalation lungside for a single beat before release - near orgasmic, you'd think by watching.

"...I want to tell you about Texas radio and the big beat..."

I cannot possibly even pretend to know what demons tear this man's heart out. What ruinous thoughts have control over him and have demolished his composure and self-esteem. He has started to dip tobacco at work now. It's a riot. In an attempt at surreptitiousness, he carries a worn paper coffee cup around the office. Faking sips whenever he has to spit. The guy stinks.

And how quickly we learn the ease with which we can swerve out of control. And how painful it can be to reflect back on our former manageable selves...while the memory still lasts. I guess that's the killer - being able to remember the feeling of composure but know that it's fleeting...just after the pilot aborts but while flight is stable for a short time, stable by momentum only.

"The fucking ants...crawling all over my skin...gah! My back just kills, you know? And like my neck, aahhh. Don't you get like this? I have like this yawn in my chest - you know what I mean? I can't get it, I can't catch it. No matter how deep I inhale...no inhale is deep enough to turn the corner to climb over this yawn."
"..."
"I think I'll do another cigarette."

old and broken

He had been sitting again. In his rocking chair on that front porch that he built with sweat as a younger man. He was once proud. Of what he had built and the friends he had and, most, the wife he loved. She loved him too. Enough to care for him ceaselessly and to ignore his selfish tendencies and to try, even before herself, to make him smile...always before herself. He had promise, or so he thought. Unfulfilled, and that he knew, and now this is what he considers most.

The warm summer was giving way now. To cooler months and shorter days that always bred depression. None worse than that one though. When it happened and they lost promise and his mind weakened and his resolve dampened and optimism died. The proper vocabulary did not exist. The perfectionist had lost control, words became tougher and uglier anyway and silence was easier for his diminished capacity. The world was wrong. Or maybe it was god or evolution or all them at the same time. But there was no one to take it out on and so, he blamed himself. Then and soon after and then for years on end. And this was ruinous.

He rocked methodically. Content and comfortable like one does when favorite song plays in head. Looking at him, one can see the years. Living still within his wrinkled face, greyed head, pained movements, and yellowed teeth. His eyes give a thousand-mile stare and his responses are delayed. Long enough for one to question whether he even heard the question in the first place. And so he rocks, measuring his life against the ridiculous standards he had set for himself. Sure, the friends he knew, the days he loved, and of course his wife, his partner, his queen. But goddamn those standards and how they were never neared, for whatever reason and whomever's blame, and the angst that brought and how it kept him frightened to death of committment for fear of failure...and where that leaves him now...an unfulfilled promise.

control

the animal returns!

he loses restraint in an instant. no longer even-keel. no longer of acceptable mental capacity. no longer composed. he is rage! uncontrollable furnace. he's kicking and screaming, literally and primally - totally uninhibited. clenched jaw and the gritty taste of grinded toothdust.

and he's searching unconsciously, feverishly, for something of comfort...something he can control. 'where the fuck is this?' or 'why the fuck is this so untidy?' or some other triviality. trivial to his human form and under normal circumstances, but to animal? of life or death criticality.

and when he finds it? that something that was so necessary for him to restore congruence? that he sought without cerebral thought? does it provide evidence that he has control? that he is...man? does it restore status? meh. unfortunately the assuagement is but a brief breeze.

just...need...control...

...or perception of it, at least. please, we beg of you, trick us into thinking we are in control. and in return? happiness and obedience.

genius

these men? these men are heroes, son. fashion yourself after them. burrow your soul in the wombs of their writings and sap on the teets of their knowledge. for if i am to be considered man at all, then it is only because their genius has long outlasted their genes.

thank god for these men and others like them. for they have done most to shape our species into one of pride.

heed not that outsized rewards are granted to those that play on field and screen and with money. it will long be this way, as our advance is ever mitigated with wanton desire. but immortality will be granted not to these men; for that will be the province of lasting genius - those that have deceived the deity and altered the course of his divine plan.

Are you a strong man, a hero...a conqueror? Barrel chested? Destroying opponents and mocking the weak? Brow thickening and intimidating when furrowed? Confident like the alpha lion and with the coveting mates to match? No one left to insult you? Nothing existing to suprise you? Never having been subordinated? A supercilious hero? Face kept stone when life - the only one who truly can - slaps it? Or, better yet, an ironical smile, because you had anticipated this and expected that very slap at that very moment...are you immutable and blessed by the Gorgon?

No, I am sorry, you are not.

You are, my friend, soft and mealy. Mottled and pallid. An over-ripened apple. A milquetoast. A fragile ego with insecure intelligence. Clinging to life with brittle and rusted ties. A mere gust of wind would blow your world to dust...and you? Staring at the sky with those X's over your eyes.

You pathetic fool! You cartoon! Can you at least balance your worthlessness with some reserve and end this, this naivete? Can you not, for once, react like the hero, indifferently when life treats you as God Job? Who is to blame?

I see, my son, that you have grown your hair to hide the face God granted you. And, that you are - brick after slow brick - building your wall. If you remain muted, you'll end a neurotic, conversing with himself...ruined. Who will take you in then? Who will listen to the ravings of a madman. Who will be the one to carefully and painstakingly loosen and untie the bunched and clustered knot your ego has become then?

Surely, not I.

open letter to science

you and your induction. everything you have taught us, so fragile. nothing i'm afraid can ever be proven by such methods, regardless of the number of successful repetiticns. asymmetry abound - one nonsuccess or contradiction and, ah, all is lost even after seemingly-infinite successes.

forever yours,
- mathematics

walking across the desert

"it's...just...laying me to waste"

And now 30.

And only a slightly more melancholic version of the decade-junior.

Face unshaven, hair caked with filth, brain knotted and immobile and heavy, sad eyes and hands tucked into armpits, a slight rocking motion for comfort, and sentences amiss. Insufficient vocabulary to explain - noone to understand, anyway. Social skills long extinct, barked at an adolescent today. A litter of thoughts fighting for a spot...

...our proud jesus, disengaged and walking across the desert, sun sapping the fucking life out of him.

And now slowly lifting leg into casket - just to try, just to lay down for a moment, just one minute I swear. Final thin pages of an average and unexciting book turning mindlessly in the draft, dust-wooden, empty room...blue-gray...

"Let me see your tongue, son"