I Shook It With an Urgency.

He was beginning to feel like a piece of the continent fractured millions of years ago; drifting into the sea away from what he knows. It's as though he's become something unthought of while so enclosed within himself. The structure of his life maleviolent and everchanging within the confines of solitude. A piece of himself is missing; he's worried it isn't what's inside himself that makes up what he is. He's worried he is made up of that which he once surrounded himself with. And now what surrounds him is ever present memory. He's not so sharp anymore. Not so keen. He's dull and waning and wondering. He's overly kind, probably boring, and drumming his support muscles into aching pain. It hurts to lift a pillow. A sense of internal disappointment builds with each social interaction, prompting an increase in isolation. He thought he'd be stronger than this. He thought he'd be the toast of the world. He didn't know that the network of friends he'd created in the past was a form of life support. It's a good thing in a way: to realize you need everyone you love. But to be away is like the pangs of the phantom limb. Laughter that isn't there. He longs to stem the continental drift within himself. He is the piece that is missing. He wanders further from the whole. Oh, sad sack bloated with memories, this mind that tortures.

Another Pointless Emanation.

Looking up at the squalor of another fledgling sunrise brought him yet another conclusion. He'd been walking the surface of the turning world as the undead probably too long. Yet. Another. Pointless Emanation. Were those signs in the rays of bright abandon or just a fleeting example of all our lives brought to a daunting close. Mortality seems like the end. Not for those with a second chance to wander. He'd thought he was dead when the brick that had been flying for hours finally connected with his forehead. The heartbeat quickened, then slowed, then stopped. Then he was resurrected. He awoke stumbling up onto his knees and there was a crowd gathering with cell phones filming. He has risen. Pointless Emanation. He would semi-live to somewhat see another seemingly endless day. His torso cladden in a torn trash bag he flailed in the winds of dawn; fists clenching, unclenching, jaw drawn in a tight foreshadow of what was to come. He was homeless, dreamless, suntan-free, and billowing. Too few could see that his eyes cast an empty longing that resembled the dim pang of a tincan kicked down an empty alleyway at dawn. Cannery Row was his favorite novel; this favor emerging from a learned mind hoping to grasp at the straws of hobo-centric optimism. The classics taught him one thing: the life once held with love now lost could somehow been caught in between yellowed pages of novels written across centuries past. Those things that were gone could be captured within prose to be set down in stone. That's, he thought, the only way to reach an end to searching. Bring a close to this life just so he won't have to keep up this savage charade. But then again, he had already been cast down by mortar, only to be brought up in a post 20th century world. Was there any end to these Pointless Emanations? He thought not; possible pointlessly.

Five Oh Five

A long gone memory resurfaced with hands grasping whatever it was that made me a passionate drunk in the first place. It was hung askew, drawn bent, questioned widely, dreamt belligerantly. The sign hung upon a door shielding a poor, sober student from countless inebriated assaults; screeching incoherence, pawed inconsistencies, passed out wastrels sagging across the staircase. Often two towering whiskey drunks slung their insults of 100 proof breath into each other for laughter, insanity seen by most; the reverb of these delightfully tact-free interactions oozed into the room. The room in which a lonely man sat, guarding a tired soul. He's lonely. He's was waiting a long time. And he was there for you right beyond that door: Waiting. It was an empty threat, this man's droopy hand, but it was a latent one. A threat that seemed to waft into the room like a series of blast-drunk yelps at 4am. A legend was being built upon gallons of distilled liquid, droning cigarette clouds erupting from dank basements, whispers of windowpanes shattering out their insides after being wounded by a BB gun. Fireworks left glowing streaks of smoke under swaying chandeliers while the Lebowski machine spoke of wondrous lifestyles of limber minds. Muffled thumps were heard behind a wood panel door that marked the beginning of the gimp room. A spare tire hung from the porch above two broken out televisions that begged for attention from the neighbors. A shattered twinkling disco ball warned others of gross injustices done to our realm. Nothing could take away what the man upon the door held throne over. We all were what this man upon the door was: searching for that which would keep us company. May we all see that door open.

Toothsucker Takes His Reward.

It feels good to hold the young punk's head underwater. It feels good to be a young punk while holding another young punk's head underwater. He'd scattered his brains across these streets like confetti for a decade and the steamship coughs smoke into the opal green sky just the same as it had when he first began. Now he is just as desperate as before. His cup is just as full of an ebbing tide of dim lit change and coagulated blood flecks. Here was this little fucker telling him off. Here was his head going under a murky depth of seafoam. It just feels good to issue a fee that is nonrefundable. It feels good to hold a young punk's head underwater. A feeling of remorse peaks up in someone's conscience. It's not his and he sucks his teeth thinking of all the injustice done to him in the past thirty nine minutes. What was it that was said to him by this fledgling mistake of a young punk? Dream on fatbag. Slop doesn't eat itself for free. Now, thinks the young punk who happens to be holding another young punk's head underwater, what is that supposed to mean? What is a fatbag and am I one of these things? Can slop really not eat itself? Or is it that it just doesn't do it for free? The young punk ascribes a dire meaning to his taught arm muscles by sucking his teeth to a further degree. A slurping sound licks itself up and down the throbbing alleyway and the young punk, the one with his head underwater, writhes like the photomontage of a genocide flowing past at a rate of two thousand images per second. The scene is there: a young punk holding another young punk's head underwater.

Sing It, Bluesman! Or Don't. Just Be Drunk Instead.

Let us all rejoice for our heads are bulbous and our souls are treacherous. We do not steal from the gold pit, we mitigate it's sadness. We leave behind a stench of decadence like a cloak of happiness for those without. We look upon the derelict house we once were told was our home and slip upon the ice to crack open our tiny childish dreams. We treat our weariness with gray liquid, sullied, staunch, and sanguine. A complexion of rouge blooms under our cheerfully flat eyes: we are complacent and we toy with ideas of grandeur. We, at one point, let our hands lose grip of our passports, our mainline, our poor, poor dayjobs. We, at some point, saw the ship approach to take our love away. We, at no point, lose the will to take matters into our own hands. We are together in this because we have no more to be sorrowful for. For sorrow beholds that which is empty. Like a ragdoll. Or a pin cushion. For we laugh upon sorrow's rapturous journey through our lives. We look straight into the soothsayer's eyes and declaim, "Low and behold! The drunken taxi driver keels over, perilous and dry, finally bringing us to our final destination!" We do not cry tears in the booze. We cry like the orphan who spies the lurid details of a lonely man losing his virginity. We cry out in agony and lust. We cry for the dreadnought who surpasses our very desires. We pain ourselves to seek that which won't be made clear: if it were just the future than it would soon be the past. So let us rejoice. For the future is always there. To be taken like a pinprick.

Not So Silly Walking.

Straight up and down his hands are restless, jittery, even. He looks at those old worn planks rotting along the river: Am I older than them? Will I last as long as them? They are the skeletons of a forgotten industry. Steamboat apparitions left to worry about all the cargo they once serviced. The river laps against them taking a bit of themselves with each lull of water. His own utility now looks futile. He wants to tell the clock on the wall to shut up. I'm not here to rest! I'm keeping this fusion of life and despair alive! Like an encumbered log taking in the restless sea, no, like a tiny splinter of wood already taken from the tree, he is looking foward to a future uncertain. These are the days of the snapshot of archaic lanterns. They cast a dim light upon an age of backbreaking work, coal streaked on cheek, miscarraige left ungrieved. The age of toiling away without a thought. The mind wasn't so pristine as to wonder what it was then. It wasn't there for itself. It lifted hands for the shovel. It tore blisters from an axe. It stole years with a pick. Now his kind has all of time on their hands. To while away with thoughts bouncing, sending terrifying echoes of self fulfilling mortality. He is of the age of self awareness, lack of industry, tourism, the sights, leisure, entropic delight. Your checkout time is 10am and there is no extra charge for the forthcoming uncertainty.

Lynch, Palm, Island.

Frightened by his own sentimental mind he drops everything he has with mouth agape. Looking out of tearstained eyes at dazzling island melodies, sun sharpened knives of light and color tear through the palm fronds sheltering the temperate dreams trembling in his skull. The tropical climate makes him mad. Those around him play cards, tend yards, bleat "howdy 'pard." He's caught in a lowly intermission of thought: Nothing keeps this sun alive except salt water drunks. Snapping back to the parasol of reality, he wonders what he's been doing here in the middle of the ocean calm on drugs and edgy with panic. He's even further on his way to an even further panic. A further destination. Condensed experience melts down into wisdom, he tells himself, and the conveyor belt of mundane dribble he's been working on for years won't abide any character development. "This won't change a thing, these worldy pursuits." says the tired midget starved with chicken wing dangling inches from mouth. The midget that inhabits his soul. The little guy so warm inside with self doubt. So he was here to make amends with the lifeless existence he'd been living. He was here to wonder aloud, with strangers staring, what all those glistening babies that were his cherished memories had grown up to be. They may be drunk rumbling castaways tearing apart fabric with mangled cogs of hands; society reeling for an answer for this madness. They may be tight little curls on a young, affluent women's hair style; bobbing as more money changes hands. They may be burning an effigy cast alight for fear of losing the keys that once entered upon sanity. They may have never even been born, those trembles: to think, I've done nothing but sit here for the bite of worrisome thought. I've done nothing but hold out my hand, asking for change. The sun beats him down, his face is withered paper, his hands are kids gloves. The salt licks up and down his legs, leaving a floe of silt like purposeful snow banks upon an ancient river. Frozen, or wishing to be, he doesn't want this equatorial climate taking his moments for a malarial ride much longer. Deciduous thoughts are raining down on him like tattered leaves from a long gone elm in November. He faces towards the bottom of the world and he gasps.