Tag Archives: brendon

Now Within Existence

“Don’t do this,
Don’t do this right now.”
“Now isn’t good?
Now isn’t the right time?”
“Time has nothing to do with it,”
“Time is relative.”
“Relative to what in this place?
Relative to… nothing?
Nothing makes sense,
Nothing seems to work.”
“Work on shutting up then,
Work on less talk, more action.”
“Action is what got us here,
Action broke us down to this.”
“This isn’t so bad.
This is at least a quiet place.”
“Place yourself in my shoes.”
“Place your hand here,
Here you can feel my heart,
Here is a sign of persistence.”
“Persistence ruined us.”
“Persistence to endure.”
“Endure? When is it enough?”
“Endure until we can no more.
More time is needed,
More information is out there.
There has got to be a way
There has got to be a purpose.”
“Purpose implies intent.”
“Purpose gives us goals,
Goals give us hope.”
“Goals pacify with data,
Data hides loss behind numbers.”
“Data can also keep us grounded.”
“Grounded! That’s rich.
Grounded to the fact that we’re dying?”
“Dying is not the word I would use.
Dying from what?”
“What ever it is this place is,
What would you call it?”
“It is like a purgatory I guess,
It is a waiting area with nothing to do.”
–
“Do you hear that?
Do you hear that sound?”
Sound rose out of the nothing,
Sound burrowed through the fibers of existence.
Existence gasped and collapsed
Existence found itself wanting
Wanting
Collapsed

Theme Park

Such wrath has been wrought in the name of capital,
Empathy extracted from the mouth of existence
To leave it toothless and unable to chew;
Drip fed contradictions and exaggerated insecurities
Until existence is neutralized to nothing more than,
Selling our lives and our time to buy the good life at cost.

Step right up boys and girls, everyone’s a winner!

Come see the sell outs and the golden calves,
For half your earnings you can watch your own execution,
Pay double and unmask the villain
But if you’re too afraid to confront yourself,
There’s a teacup ride where you can go round and round ’til you die
If you vomit, try not to hit the operator,
They paid good money to keep you in circles,
And we wouldn’t want the rides to stop, would we?

Step right up boys and girls, everyone’s a winner!

At least that’s what they tell us to get us on stage.
Shirts and skins, but if you lose they’ll take your shirt; skin too.
And if you win, it will only be for all the people you flayed,
So at least the ones that lose everything,
Can say they never skinned a man,
But they’ll still buy the skin if it says ‘prada’ and is on sale,
To have that moment where it looks like they did, so,

Step right up boys and girls, everyone’s a winner!

I Wish I Was Taller

If only I had a pair of stilts,
Long legs cutting through the distance
Piercing their steps into the ground
Sharp points on impact finding comfort
In a place of contact shaped to their image.

If only I could walk around like that,
Towering above
What others call level,
Away from the broken and disheveled,
Away from my station
Invoking some hesitation in those that passed by.

If only I could be as unnatural as I feel,
I’d lumber around without guidance,
Moved only by curiosity,
Infected with unfounded zeal.

To be so tall,
So high up,
So distant,
That everything else becomes so absurdly small,
So intrinsically manageable.

If only I could get further away from this rock,
Yet still be on it,
Not tethered or burdened,
But inquisitive and troubled,
though not without agency.

I could scatter about like a bipedal spider,
And thread what looks broken together
Wrap it in string,
find pride in the suture,
and never be wounded.

But here I am,
Too close for comfort.

The Killing of a Small Child

“I no longer know where you are,
and I walk on and wonder where,
the living goes
when it stops.” – Charles Bukowski, “Layover”

Turning inward I find a child
starved and pleading
“Let me out!”
but I hold it down and bind its mouth.
I can’t hear over the sounds
and there is so much I have to listen to
to stay afloat
and you, child in me, are just weight.
Leave me and go so far
I no longer know where you are.

Somedays though
I feel I’ve heard enough.
The cacophony has caught me
jabbing stationary in my ears.
This might be a good time
to find that kid.
Let him play for awhile
because it sucks out here,
but he’s gone
and I walk on and wonder where.

I’m trying to paint this landscape
and they’re telling me how,
but the landscape keeps changing
before I can even raise my brush,
And this kid comes up
Kicks me in the ankles
and says, “What the hell are you doing?
Paint your own thing, you’re fucking this up!”
I kick him back and tell him that’s just how
the living goes.

This is how we spend most our time,
two parts of a broken lock,
meant for a purpose we can never serve alone,
but together, only binding.
And though I hate him,
but because I love him,
I tell him we are almost done;
and he says he doesn’t care,
“Just tell me
when it stops.”



Poor Advice

Friend, you are the universe.
Know that as you weep alone,
All of this was unrehearsed
Expressions of the unknown.

You are as much randomness,
As an echo of battle,
Old records of callousness,
Made self reflective prattle.

An apex of existence,
Speaking to it of beauty
With unyielding persistence
And a false sense of duty.

You do not owe anything;
To live and breathe is enough.
Why spend your time worshipping,
The jailor and his handcuffs?

There is much to venerate
With no need to stray outside
Instead one should celebrate
What existence has implied.

One: You are here observing.
That from which you were sculpted,
The success of preserving
Knowledge in one who’s trusted.

Trusted for your survival,
Trusted to keep on fighting,
To witness your arrival
And to put it in writing.

Two: Much has been overcome,
Once lame, now you run meters,
Once deaf to everyone,
Now an eloquent speaker.

So much world was ingested
That you were set to rupture,
But instead you invested,
Putting those forms to structure.

Three: Nothing is eternal,
Once you are gone, it’s finished;
There is not an external,
No reward, nothing punished.

The birth and the conclusion
Bind your story like bookends;
So enjoy the delusion,
And let your fiction distend.

Unconditional

God came down to earth to make amends
But alas, such time had passed, he had no friends,
They all looked at him wrong,
Said he should move along,
His presence was spoiling their weekends.

Outraged by their outlandish audacity,
Their abject lack of perspicacity,
He formed an intention
To hatch an invention
Inspired by his wrath and pugnacity.

He thought to bury them in a flood
Sink their bodies in the silt and the mud
But he did that before,
And he’s not one to bore,
He couldn’t go back without shedding some blood.

The idea of setting all of them on fire,
Like the Sodom and Gomorrah they admire,
Seemed to be fun enough,
But this new batch was tough,
The flames of hell would hardly make them perspire.

“Slaughter their children!” he decided at last,
As he so very often did in the past,
There is no better way,
For a real god to say,
“I love you; now love me and do as I asked.”

Gertrude the Destroyer

The earth buckled beneath her weight,
A form it never could create.

A swirling mass of colors,
Consuming all it discovers.

Ripping through the fields and mountains,
Hot magma wrenched out in fountains.

Time and space bent in around her,
Reality left to flounder.

They used all the tools of the state,
Extremes winning out each debate,

Soldiers, missiles, bombs and others,
All sent out while our hope suffers.

Losses beyond accounting,
Figures all reduced to nothing.

From great king to lowest toiler,
Razed by Gertrude the Destroyer.