________
I think maybe the largest contribution I have for the world — the bravest contribution I have — is to accept full mediocrity. Not mediocrity that coyly acts mediocre only for you to tell it that it’s actually genius in disguise or genius obfuscated by humility. Maybe the true thing I can give is full acceptance of having nothing remarkable to offer — and there you go, it feels like martyrdom, but it’s likely not — it’s likely a fact.
I hold a zoom microphone cable
horse stable light fading i gone awol light fading
head facing to the west
wind ripple in my jacket
im a scale reference
hand fiddle at the recorder
watch horizon with a pale breakfast
rigid read hostile but its austere
need a fren i got the dog hear
pulling shapes out he static
mark this moment with a dog ear
strapped im a unit i can
bear grylls the timespace
man and im laughing get so funny man im right here
madeline l’engle i finagle the fabric
And maybe I have a couple of good thoughts but they’ll never coalesce and maybe I have a couple of strong ideas but they’re not strong enough. Or if they are strong enough to experience some semblance of success I’m not stupid enough to trust them — or impassioned enough to believe. I’m too stupid to be smart and too smart to be stupid and that line is some cheesy rip and I can’t even get away with that.
The writing is bad even in its suggestion that it’s bad — this is the doom hole. It’s not that I need a big break, it’s that I need traditional therapy and to want less acceptance from the world — I biked around whistling like a person who was not mentally well — probably because I am not mentally well. And I don’t think I’m comfortable enough or progressively versed enough in the technics of mental health to know that therapy isn’t a way to appear more interesting, it’s just what you’re supposed to do.
black turtleneck
a verbal sweat
i break room make space for the furrow
groundhog double down done breeze into his burrow
its nicer that way
trip back i snap it back
trip back i snap it back
mr murray so repetitive
normaheratetative
i put some blue in the shadows to contrast that orange
lace my mouth up with some bombast to grab at that aura of knowlege
his flora so college
his fauna so czar like
little flick a the bic annen i bask innat cigar light
white spaces leave room for the puffer
its a bottled mess a color bumper car’n toeeechother
im the keeper of my brother
and the rest of the village
these houses smoke on landscapes petey piper petty pillage
not the chimney or smokestack we fumigate the memory
put on my best suit to take part in the chicanery
batman im robin just a snake in the garden
just making circles in the color til the paint starts to harden
james harden a figure by which orient thyself
bofdeeznutsdonfeel like they’re supposed to not the image of health
sing the refrain with me would you
I was thinking recently about 50/50 which was a movie I loved when I was younger and of course a white guy wrote a movie where the first time he goes to therapy the therapist literally falls in love with him. Because how could someone get within even a remote orbit of my genius and not fall in love with me — it’s impossible — the interior life is so rich — and it becomes so immediately clear how much he was holding back. It’s not that what I have to say is uninteresting or underdeveloped or underwhelming — it’s that people can’t keep up.
I don’t think anyone can save me. I worry that line looks suicidal. I’m not at all suicidal but right now i want to smash my head against something. Every time I put the phone back down my brain starts looping again, looking down each hallway with an understanding of what’s at the end but an inability to follow it down. I don’t want to end my life but I don’t know how to keep living it per se. i factually find it very hard to wake up and have thoughts every day.
And the problem with a sentiment like that — a negative sentiment like that — this is the same problem the internet has : is it tricks you into thinking that giving it more time and energy is a more noble or worthwhile pursuit than taking the easy way out. It’s better to squeeze the thing that’s driving you crazy and watch it jump and watch it squirm and then watch it teach you the ways of the world in its hyperactivity and it’s discomfort. T
he more crazy the internet makes me, the closer I get to interfacing with the reality of the world. The whole world at once is the world and before they may have had the ability to ignore that, but not anymore. Now it’s everything at once all of the time and if you can’t deal with it you’re weak or not weak enough. I wish I could play disaffected, I wish I could hold onto a thought for more than a quarter of the day.
I wake up terrified and eat the peanut butter toast and it scares me as I eat it. I’m scared to finish and I’m scared as I head up the stairs and I’m scared as I’m typing in the YOU of YouTube on the web browser. I think I’m broken and it’s past the point of fixing, but the break isn’t even worth noting. I’m circling again to make this worthwhile but it won’t be. I’m not sure what else to do, I’m going to put the phone down. It scares me that I write “I’m going to put the phone down” and then I do — it feels like someone’s watching. And if they are, they saw me write that — I’m scaring myself a bit now. I’ll probably have a night terror.
__ the business song__
its a bunch of businessmen, dressed up as a band
thats all that i see when im checking instagram
they’re shaving dying suiting and trying hard for pics
only 30 years ago they’d have owned a motel 6
i see a bunch of businessmen playing bedroom pop
its marketing disguised as lyrics dressed up as hip hop
their faces can’t escape the balding that their fathers gave them
they wear some rings and use black language as a tactic of evasion
you were supposed to manage a restaurant and now you play a synth
you’ve brought that same old vigor to a lower ROI
privately manipulate, publicly a simp
your guitarist just got cancelled, you say he’s a good guy
white people just manage things, they mostly cannot make them
so just chop and sample actual things real people are saying
shoot it on 16 mil as a proxy to nostalgia
and make it worth that 2 grand your dad just pay pal’d yaaaaaaa
_
Ronald Reagan on the screen of the republic national convention
Just a cave painting sculpt in technicolor
Nancy waves
They like him out there
‘84 it’s Orwellian
On the corner hawking every written word
I chunked out my thoughts and here you can have it
I pile myself in every room in my house saying oh look at me there
I exist if I say so I exist if you know me
Just a shadow on the wall trace the shape you won’t forget it
erect worlds out of nomenclature
I’m writing this shit on the toilet I’m writing this shit on the toilet
I categorize lift label for later
Construct a whole mind state that looks like the PC pipe screen saver
Run the faders get audio
Of me beheading myself
I exfoliate the brain it’s a push for my Health
Rub my temple feel the future coming
I sense it
Seen an omen or two
The church burnt on 2nd and seventh
fire tucked the collar the reverend
but I didn’t read it as such I didn’t read it as such
there’s a bright and airy world lift your head above water
I draw clean lines between the figures
Between the diagrams
the paper keep texture though
I legitimatize only to pull power eventually
Necessary stuck wedding extensively
Tween the way it sound and way it look
my mouth set in a stable crook
I’m just a reaction to the things in front of my self
I stand with my pants tucked quiet on the forefront
Landscape stretches out before me
I have a puff jacket and it blocks the wind
I’m at the edge of the cliff and loving it
You can see so much from up here
Don’t like when I talk
Only like when I listen
Walk back from the party with a dissonance ripping
Tell myself the gap is what the dividends missing
Tell myself the gap
Tell myself the gap
I fill it in too often _He’s a pack dog he likes to work!__
__muscle__
blue papers strewn across the floor — blue to announce themselves, white can’t hold your attention
its an uphill battle to be anything at all, expect it
a bag of apples in the back seat of the volkswagen passat discipline to victory
sin and binge work and win
the muscle tears and grows back stronger - if it doesn’t tear it doesn’t grow
big wins and big losses
there is not a surface in this picture that does not denote wealth
there is not a surface in this picture that has not been elaborately and skillfully worked
wield the image like the zimbabwe dollar lug my wheelbarrow to the gas station
the only way to be is a mess
_
_
my boyfriend ira glass my affair with him nice
its meditative and friendly like this american life
when they see me in the club they like he whacky dang
got a voice that you can trust like im lackshmi Singh
Got a gap in my knowledge read a book and it’s filled in
I keep the show running way too long like Regis Philbin
My nickname in high school was dutch oven
I pull up to the track practice like, “coach, ask me to jump something!”
my voice real hoarse like a centaur body
baby boy be your friend dap up Kimo Sabe
I radiate messy nickname Chemo Slobby
Told you only thing I smoke is primo papi
and I see more shawties at the park
than anywhere else
but Im tryna park like anywhere else
i see a revel like download and go
i download and go
drove through a river
now my toyota row
nah its a rav 4
it got a back what the back 4
what the back do
slim in the forest call me jungle jim
its jungle james to you
my mouth sealed shut like a zip loc baggy
i rap w joy like im hip hop happy
im texting on your girl i send her a Memoji
living on a prayer like we jon bon jovi
Real quiet when I’m turned on call me toyota prius
at a small college like loyola jesus
assessment__
well and I didn’t really look at my face for real until a few years ago. I liked the way I looked when I was younger in that I was interested in being a grown up version of it. But then for a long time I think most of my perception of myself avoided the way my face looked cause it was covered in acne and so it moved towards my silhouette. And I did thrifted sweaters and whatever else. And then summer of 2016 I guess maybe it was, I started to look at my face for the first time for real. And the rest of my body and my skin and think of it as something that somebody else might look at and how did that fit in to what I imagined good men look like.
My face is okay, it never really complies — whenever I catch myself in a mirror or see footage of myself, my expressions are wildly different from what I imagined and sort of look like a confused dog, but it’s interesting and I can’t change it anyway.
And my shoulders I like them enough because they freckle in the summer. But really for the whole top half of my body, I’m obsessed with the way the soldiers look in the ken burns vietnam documentary — all sinew and stringy and like the sun beat handsomeness into them
My hips have all these blister marks from when I used to wear my belt too tight, but I think those are interesting. I like how if you tap the right part of the hip, it’s hollow, like a whale bone maybe. And my whole torso is shifted to the right from my scholiosis so I think that avoids my looking exactly pretty
My leg hair turns blonde in the summer and I don’t like my legs unless it does that
Sometimes it’s nice to imagine myself like a rag doll rolling down a hill and every once in a while I toss something good out of me along the way.
And there are certain days where I can feel my body and how it creaks and bends as I move and those are the good days I think.
Prepare to die mandy pantinkin
My career path swerve
is committing something to memory the only way to love it
i know the work and it’s within me
borremans talks in low res translated
he touches the canvas points figures imitated
hand swimming touch the depths every topic it graze
mariokart mushroom jump the surface jogging in place
the glassblower -his parents said
leave room for the book on the shelves
he knows about the shelves
tip and split the cranium pour let it filleth the head
i put the cowboy hat back on outside the VW
i was touching things more and the colors were bleeding
mix the plate up like thanksgiving
only know what the one is against the other
winter a tunnel vision challenge
stare into the abyss and remember you can best it
allowing distillations the gift
space in the middle
at the altar of the space in the middle
dont fill it though careful with that
things i make only funny as i character make them
want to steal some clothes make a character take them
its a study on this or a study on that
i fill up my tummy get metaphorically fat
i get narratively fit
take an arc of a shit
it’s a literary device every misstep i hit
his voice all gravel from the tar he sucked in
lungs filter ash riddled cigar in a rust tin
iggy pop all sinew
leftover from when he would tip it back
taxi driver street literally litered with trash
70s movie just impregnated w darkness
build good wrinkles in your face when you wince at the hard shit
how did the house wife survive
does it work to ignore
bony hand wriggle little simple diddy digit chore
type gibber as exercise fuck these little digits for
dont say your ankles broken you might make it it is
soda fault when you shake it it fizz
petrified of my lineage like a plagiarist is
no but for real there was a different way of being
you had to just like roll with the weight
stuck at the EZPASS now paying tolls for the hate
a long line so queue it up
and dewey sucks put an order on the chaos
decimals decimate the approxy of the seance
lick the pole with an epoxy i dont wanna take a day off
beat: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXHunloEXbM
got my mouth all heavy
full of dip alia shawkat in the pettibon room
some sorta malice tremble in the voice of every male voice i consume
they’re darting and transitory not an ends just a means
an unfortunate creak made by the world as it leans
hanging on desperate - build the stairs from the previous step
rise and run and run and rise sharp breathe in the chest
sternum puncture me i hear the hiss of the cold
it leaks out of me we all just eventually old
it leaks out of me - the way that i am
use the better people weight so you can steady the hand
and bland doesn’t ruin at least
then the power can move
stuck on a rattle round a rim mock a ball in a hoop
got two scoops
now with the bran in the box
when they gonna stop with the scoops
keep the branding so hot
oops im all berries
it’s hard parry
a flurry of blows
the brain smells the toast guess a stroke
and it worries the nose
and im all hurried with prose
the short hand an escape route
funny its spelled just like the word
funny its spelled just like the word
funny its spelled just like the word
__and__
I’m thinking now about how yesterday I was watching 12 Angry Men, and they mentioned in the court room that pre-meditated murder was the highest charge that one could testify against in the court. And it’s interesting, though murder through fit of passion was still murder, that an action that was pre-meditated could be implied with so much more malice. And I guess pre-meditated sex has a certain amount of malice, because to conjure an idea into the world is to give it physical space, whether you want to view that spiritually, or by electron — it seems that once you introduce an idea, it becomes much more probable. Maybe I wasn’t introducing these ideas. Maybe they were already there. Maybe it’s the beauty of a certain amount of love at first sight, or maybe it’s Robert Deniro balancing the TV against his foot in Taxi Driver. Pre-meditation is beautiful, it’s disgusting, it’s terrifying. It’s inherently non-consensual. Is manufactured or curated consent still a form of consent? Is suiting a moral possibility?
__i smoke a cigarette outside the wawa__
i paint the studio a dark green
my brush stroke suggestive
say out loud ya know wha mean
this whole rhyme a pyramid scheme
ya know when you seen
ya know when you conquered
came saw saw cain
im able I’m staple like rice and vegetable
im nice slender n able
sturdy truths only ill slap and slander a fable
baby babel mumsword
dusty bible on the dash
only communication exists in deeply coded words
coffee up jot the javascript
see my reflection adjust my posture quick
show me my reflection adjust my posture quick
film myself find the imposter in the flick
i want grandma hands just so preposterously fit
jump jostle i storm the roster
im at home using my noodle stir the paster
starch my jeans like a cowboy
wanna ride on the mule
watch me on the landscape
who the ass who the fool
whistle while i pee at the movie theater restroom
do be do be doo
i smoke a cigarette outside the wa wa
ask that jeeves what that means when they define it as dada
tell me papi tata
say sum seerious
i feel delirious
text back haha
I’m on a trip to the tate modern
plate the meal so it taste modern
it taste clean it taste friendly
my modem light speed
god distracted when he pen me
head a motor like im lemmy
lick the letter real heavy fore i send eet
keep it seal tight shut
my brain feel spiced up
if his pants all nice
how come he look fucked up
keep a terrycloth cabana on a real tight tuck
dennis quaid in the parent trap
i rhyme so good got em thinking
frank o hará back
why i care
bout something
im just so generic at
fruit mealy
look measly
when i pare it back
cant see clearly
up the intake on my carrot snack
keep my house pretty
same as fara fawcett face
sit comfy
like i just yobbed a passa plate
im bob fossye
waltz the block in my jalopy
get the dogs off me
watch the hand while it move
its a delicate art form
just give it some room
bob fosse waltz the block in my jalopy
all this jazz has me so foggy
im bob fossy
get ur dogs off me
all that jazz has me real foggy