Wednesday, December 22, 2010

3:00 A.M. Poetry

Good morning world. I know it's still pretty early, but the early bird gets the worm right? It would appear the early writer gets the best ideas too.

The following was written using the notebook tool on my cellphone at 3:00 A.M.-ish this very morning. I tried to deviate from my norm a little and integrate a bit of dialect into the verses, which (in my humble and biased opinion) did a lot to help the flow of the poem as a whole. Hopefully, going out of my writing comfort zone paid off.

So without further ado, here it is folks.

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I'm Sensin'

I'm feelin' flames in my veins
I'm feelin' frost on my lips
I'm feelin' love on her breath
And her soft fingertips

I'm seein' Hell up ahead
I'm seein' Heaven behind
I'm seein' all of my friends
Walkin' on this same line

I'm smellin' cigarette smoke
I'm smellin' cold Cleveland air
I'm smellin' toxins and fumes
But I'm too young to care

I'm hearin' fights in the streets
I'm hearin' cries in the wind
I'm hearin' everyone say
That I ought to give in

I'm tastin' salt in my tears
I'm tastin' bitter defeat
I'm tastin' time quickly pass
Like the brief summer's heat

I'm sensin' all of these things
I'm sensin' life rollin' by
I'm sensin' doors bein' closed
Though I can't explain why

I'm thinkin' I need to change
I'm thinkin' this can't be right
I'm thinkin' there's no excuse
To keep fightin' this fight

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 Any critique is welcomed, as always.

Until the next time, world...enjoy.

Thursday, December 9, 2010

Everybody's Workin' For The Weekend

Good afternoon, blogosphere.

So, I know everybody on here is all big into the whole "Random Tuesday" scene, so I figured "Hey, fuckers. I'm gonna go a different route."

I present to you...Random Thursday. I don't blog enough to make this little nugget of gold a WEEKLY thing, but I can probably pull monthly. Or bi-annually. Or centennially. 




Tell me this isn't an awesome idea.




I sincerely hope this isn't real, because if it is I'm going to Burger King for lunch. It's a respect thing. Oh, and by the way, the fine-print is HILARIOUS. "Thick and Hearty Steak Sauce"? Yeah, your mom has had one of these.



I honestly don't even know.




Does this need words?


And as a chaser to all this bullshit, I figured I'd throw in a random picture relating to the holiday spirit.



A redneck by the name of Steve who I used to associate with probably has this hanging on a wall in his home. As an aside, I don't think anybody else could get away with dressing like that. Ever.

Until next time, world...enjoy.












Sunday, November 28, 2010

I Still Haven't Figured This Out

Ciao, world. It's been awhile, eh? A month and a day, on the dot. Time flies when you're alive, it seems. A whole hell of a lot has happened in the past month, good and bad and ugly abound. I lost a girl, met a girl, that girl ended up being something of a stalker, and then I met another girl. The latter is absolutely amazing, but I won't do her the disservice of merely mentioning her as an aside in a blog about something entirely unrelated. She deserves a whole post, and, as a man who rarely disappoints, I plan on making that happen.

But I digress. This is about the past, the very long-dead past (in the eyes and hands of a high school senior).

The setting? A year ago, today. Yes, today. You think I came out of my month-long blogging hiatus for anything less than the anniversary of a major event? Fwahaha. Hardly.

Anyway...it was one year ago today. I had been suffering from a motherfucker of a cold for something like a week and a half, and in my sniffling desperation I opted for a quadruple dose of Vick's NyQuil, green-death flavor, (my personal favorite) thinking it would annihilate my symptoms. And annihilate them it did, along with most of my depth perception and what little grasp I normally have on reality.

There was a crash. Darkness. A bump. Cold pizza. Six stubbed toes. And then, I knew no more.

I slept for what felt like days, but was really only about a half an hour. Then, as I awakened from my dextromethorphan-induced coma for the first time, a strange thing happened. You see, I seemed to have transcended reality entirely. To this day I hold firm to the belief that I was all-knowing, completely omniscient, for about ten minutes. Thankfully, I took this time to write.

The rest is a blur until morning. As I rolled off of my couch, I found next to me a yellow pad scribbled with writing in a feverish, manic script. This is what was on the pages.


This Poem Is About My Basement

The whole world spins on its axis, without me.
I must turn alone.
And what are you, O Bright Blue Light?
The glare of your reflection is far more to me than the glare of your shine alone.
We are all walking on the bean.
O wood paneled forests,
O skies of spongeprint maze,
Within that labyrinth, do I find the horse?
Whose shining knowledge transcends to every dark corner and alleyway where once we dotted our I's?
The dot, I think, carries more to it than the line.
For I have seen gods in the mirrors, demons in the frames.
Do still pictures weep? Do still waters sleep?
The knowledge of the world is suddenly, so suddenly, upon me.
With every golden fret I touch, the Earth and Her secrets are born unto my soul.
The blink.
Shimmering eyes of canine truth, their lids heavy with the work of day, of innocent function.
The blinks and blips and whirs and clicks of this world are to me a coded lily, whose mystery may hold nothing.
Or all things.
Is Time a river?
Or is it a crusade, to convert, and destroy, and enlighten, and crumble away the love of Good and knowledge of Right?
Sleep has kissed me, ever gently. I have walked in fields of purple shag, where things were and were not. The White Horse in Her beauty did not show herself, but showed of me all known things.
I have danced with moonbeams, I have gambled with gods.
What price we pay.
To touch, to feel, to love, to taste, to know, to have, to lose, such burdens are the pot of this game.
I have seen with eyes that do not see, I have committed Wrong and thought it Right.
The universe submits to the coded scale.
And to it, we are a zero weight item, here only to help tilt the other aspects of our Haven.
We are the fox, we are the lamb.
To change is not always to love.
We must show love as the ambiance does, freely and unrelentingly.
The electric eye is aware, above, aloft, and turns only to what moves in conscience.
You can see it everywhere.
I find inspiration in the wood.
The lonely shadow, the glistening screen.
See your ceiling as a parable for Life, and you will know these things.
All around me, I see Man's achievements.
Do they clog?
Do they rust?
Do they make us less than who we are?
In the casting of the emerald, I find only ones and twos.
But even ones and twos can make six.
I call to talk with Nobody.
We are old friends, and his static assurance.
White noise lifts me.
In descending, I have also transcended.
Does that not also mean that I have ascended?
There is purity in lowliness.
I weep for nothing, sharing my eyes with those who cannot cry for themselves.
In sleep I find.
Hook, horror, claw, beak, fang, nail, death.
O eye that never closes.
Red polar to the White Horse, Evener of the Coded Scale.
I see you.
I know you.
The fear of you may kill me, but
Understanding your function will liberate
Me.
You must exist, O Greatest Evil, O Horror in the Shades, for the White Horse to do Her great works.
But why DO YOU KILL?
Sight of your lidless eye has broken me.
I am below the Earth.
Do I take the door to the room of knives and silver?
What solace is in that bladed chapel?
BLOOD be spilled on no cold ground.
Musical arm.
Reaching up from the chair where you lay.
What help can I give you?
There is wisdom in the 3.
Look for it, and know I speak the truth.
And in the center of the 3, lidless eye.
Persisting to be existing.
The cloth is right-side-up, showing the house of the bird.
To me,
Acceptance of evil is far more disconcerting than evil itself.
Doyouleaveyourbody?
What horrid consuming vessels.
The mark of truth is birth, from thenceforth we lie.
Lie.
Life.
Li(f)e.
Am I a transient being?
This Me, it sees what pains the Earth.
The poison, a greeting of "Hello" from within my stomach.
Audibly heard, duly noted.
I know the devil in the dollhouse, the secret each family hides.
Our facade is imperfect, we believe it because that is what we know.
There is no time for revision.
To edit is to lie.
Innocent are the animals of the Earth, for they know not the pain of being Man.
The dog does not lust.
The cat does no covet.
The bird does not hate.
The horse does not judge.
Embryonic in their existences, these beings know only content, and love of what we give them.
Companions, steadfast in this island of endless forests.
Look for the spot.
All of you who would listen, know this:
This work is important, to find and to value the fruits that the White Horse has shown us.
When seized by motivation, you must do.
She cannot be saddled, for that would imply mastery.
One can only become as an equal to the gods of their own mind.
The heart is pointing.

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And they say psychoactive drug use doesn't make for wonders in the arts. Until next time, world...enjoy.

Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Head Trauma, Part One

Hello, world. It's been a few days since my last post, but boy oh boy do I have a story for you.

It started this past Friday as I was getting ready to board the bus and go to school. About five minutes prior, I had been smoking a cigarette, since I just turned eighteen and the novelty seemed so appealing. Besides, smoking is cool, dude. *slicks back his 1950's greaser hair*

Stupid? Very.

Anyway, the cigarette was a Marlboro Red 100, my absolute favorite. I had just recently started "really" smoking; before it had usually been just whenever I happened to be with a buddy who was lighting up. As a new smoker, the effect of the nicotine on my body and the fact that it totally took away my ability to maintain a sense of balance was, in a few words, fucking heavy. On top of that, anybody who's ever smoked a Red 100 knows it's a damn strong cigarette.

As I was getting onto the bus, my depth perception failed me and I fell backwards. Luckily, the back of my head absorbed most of the impact, sparing the important parts like my face, hands, or dick. *slurs*

From what I've been told, (I blacked out and can't remember most of this little episode) I hit the sidewalk, had what looked like a seizure, and then tried to get up on my own. I do remember a ten-second period where I was stumbling around and almost falling over, panicking because, for some reason, I had temporarily lost my eyesight. I'm not sure if that was due to the skull-on-cement smackdown, but it was some scary shit folks.

They eventually got me onto the bus, and we waited for the EMS to arrive. A couple of middle-aged guys who looked like they hated their jobs came onto the bus, and escorted me to the ambulance parked behind it. Once aboard, one of the men asked me what day it was. Clutching my Niagara-Falls-Bleeding-Head-Wound and trying not to drool too much, I replied, "Tuesday?".

You guessed it. Wrong.

After asking me if I was a diabetic, and pricking my goddamn finger anyway despite the fact that I told them I wasn't, I was strapped down onto the gurney like some kind of crazed asylum escapee.

After a twenty-minute road trip, we arrived at the hospital. This part of the story I'll save for another post, since it involves some really funny shit that I'd love to go into detail with, but don't have the time for right this minute. (I'm in study hall for another ten minutes or so)

There you have it, folks. That's the story of how I figured out that cement > my head. Since the incident occurred, I've had some strange side effects too. For instance, my short term memory is shot to hell, I experienced a very vivid hallucination upon waking up from a nap the other day, and sometimes stationary objects appear to be swaying back and forth. (The computer I'm sitting at is demonstrating this to me as I type these words) Good stuff.

Well, until next time world...enjoy. 

Monday, October 18, 2010

Waning With No Chance of Waxing

"As daylight wanes, through window panes I glimpse a world I'll never really see. The curtains close, God only knows that it's a life I'll never lead."

A bit of something I suppose. I seem to be waning, with no hope of waxing.


Until next time, world...enjoy.

Sunday, October 17, 2010

Today I Had Cereal, But No Goddamned Milk

Good afternoon, world. Its me again, your least favorite neurotic passenger in the Great Big Taxi Cab To Hell. It's been a strange day.

I decided recently that my life is comparable to shuffling through one of those gimmicky, $5-a-ticket haunted houses while under heavy sedation. And I do mean heavy. We're talking high-grade beaver tranquilizer folks. Military grade.

Gah. What the fuck am I even talking about? I think this is the result of way too much nicotine intake. Ah, the joys of just turning eighteen and surmising that just because you CAN buy cigarettes, you should. I feel like a decrepit piece of shit, and it's in the best possible way. Which is to say, the worst possible way if you're looking at the situation through a groovy, rainbow colored kaleidoscope.

But who uses kaleidoscopes anymore anyway? I'm pretty sure those died off in the middle of the decade prior, something like 2004 or 2005.

If you're still reading this I have to commend you. I'm not even writing right now; this is just my brain experiencing explosive diarrhea. The mental refuse is just so happening to splatter onto the keyboard.

In other news...

On an interesting side note, I experienced something strangely awesome the other day whilst sitting in a car with Ex-Girlfriend on the way to Sandusky.

The radio had been playing the song "Californication" by The Red Hot Chili Peppers, and the single earbud from my iPod was blasting Chopin's "Funeral March". That unusual juxtaposition was, in a word, incredible. I'd recommend it to anyone with enough free time to actually try. (read: my readers)

Well, until next time world...enjoy.

Thursday, October 14, 2010

The Dark World in Which I Dwell

It's six o'clock A.M., and I need to take a walk.

I leave the lights of my house and head in the direction that my brain says to, this naturally being the playground near my neighborhood. The wet asphalt beneath my boots glimmers like so many useless diamonds, each a fake and flimsy memory of the past year. Metaphors, metaphors. I drown in a sea of them; it's my natural habitat.

The world is black, and the sky is the color of an aging bruise. Its a sad solace to know that I'm the only creature of my sort wandering those streets, endlessly searching, never seeking, and never finding anything.

The houses all scream the same lesson at my brain: I will never be a part of this. I will never sit with my family in front of the television and talk to my kids about what they've got planned for the day. I will never kiss my wife goodbye as we both head off to work. I am condemned to see these things from the outside.

I am condemned to walk alone, more or less, until I find a place that suits my soul. Some dark hole, I'm sure.


Until the next time wold, enjoy.

Friday, October 1, 2010

Buy the ticket, take the ride

Good evening, world. Mmm...do you smell that?

Success.

Hardly ever do I have a chance to look back on a full, 24-hour day of my life, and think to myself "Damn, dude. You really nailed that one."

Today was different.

I started by getting the number of a little Junior sweetheart from my math class, which painted a smile on my face that was certain not to wear off until at LEAST two hours later. After that, the feel-good snowballed. It was a damn good day.

Why then, do I have this ominous feeling like tomorrow will rip me a new one?

Call it superstition, or being used to "when it rains it pours", but I get a bad vibe whenever things go as smoothly as they have today. My schedule isn't even that frightening for tomorrow, I lay on my ass all day until around 5:30 PM when I'm booked for a birthday dinner with Mom and Ex-Girlfriend, followed up by an all-night, two-man party with my good friend and associate who we will refer to as Sir Knight. (He is, coincidentally, the President of our class I mentioned in a previous rant)

Let's hope I'm just being a hopeless retard about this, and I shouldn't be so afraid of a few good developments. Until next time world, enjoy.

Monday, September 27, 2010

A Midnight Wish for Morning

The shadow of a single cloud moving lazily across the midday sky passes slowly along the ground like the silhouette of some great dark beast beneath my feet, patiently searching for something to devour. Here I dream that I have yet to live, that this walk beneath the hungry clouds is an illusion inside the psyche of a sleeping infant. I dream that everything I know is false, that I will awaken again as a child and remember nothing of this dream that I have lived for so many years. That I will lose everything save the strongest emotions of that dream.

Do I go to sleep and dream that I am someone else? Or is the other way around? Perhaps what I've always thought was happening when I fall asleep and dream is actually the process of waking up from a dream that I am an eighteen year old, disaffected wanderer who loves to write and has a life like a train wreck. Perhaps this world is that dream, and that each night I am given a chance to wake up. I ought not to trust my senses because I could be dreaming and not know it. The sense ideas that I have may not be caused by anything in the external world, they may just be a dream.

What, then, awaits those who choose to wake up? Is death not the only way to discover which place is the dream, and which is reality? 

Thursday, September 23, 2010

Extraneous? Extremely.

Hello, world. It's 11:57 in the A.M., and I'm sitting in the study hall room of my high school, called "the fishbowl" by most due to it's lack of any walls you can't see right through. Today has sucked.

Let's start with some facts. In my lab class, Computer Science and Forensics II, there are four class officer positions. These are President, Vice President, Treasurer, and Secretary/Historian. I am currently Vice President. Its my first time ever holding a class office in my thirteen years of school thus far, and its about to be threatened by an overbearing lab instructor with what seems to be a mix between bipolar disorder and a Napoleon complex. 

Early in the lab period, a fellow student who we will affectionately refer to here as The Idiot decided to start a class petition. The petition itself stemmed from an in-class joke between The Idiot and the instructor concerning a lack of adequate amounts of hand sanitizer in the lab room. The petition called for an increase of hand sanitizer bottles, and demanded that a non-member of the class body (read: teacher) should be the one to trek down to central supply (a daunting 3 minute quest) and retrieve said bottles. I, along with the President and Treasurer, signed the obviously jesting document thinking it was little more than a friendly, harmless joke.

The instructor thought otherwise.

After discovering The Idiot going station to station asking for signatures, and subsequently losing his mind over the ordeal, (picture a bald Orville Redenbacker with veins popping out of his forehead) he called for myself and my fellow officers to come talk to him. Without any forethought whatsoever he informed us that we no longer held offices in his class due to our "immaturity" and the fact that we maliciously "went behind his back". Now, I'm sorry folks, but that might be the most outlandishly ridiculous thing I've had to listen to since Tony Hayward attempting to cover up the BP oil spill on national television. It was a joke, and a disgrace to respectable intellect everywhere. How this man, who I do genuinely respect, could sink so low as to throw a hissy-fit over a good-hearted faux petition concerning HAND SANITIZER is absolutely beyond me. But because of his little moment of insecurity, weakness, and need for control, I'm looking at resigning the position I've waited four years for.

I will be perfectly clear: If myself, or any of my fellow officers are removed from their hard-earned and well-deserved class positions, I will withdraw every bit of my support from this lab, and I will vehemently encourage my peers to do the same. This is a dictatorial scandal, a slap in the face of good leadership practices, and a blundering mistake. I will not support class fund raisers. I will not attend class banquets or meetings. I will not so much as consider joining BPA (Business Professionals of America) or entering into any related computer skills contests for the instructor's glory. I will continue to be a respectful student, and I will continue to do my work to the utmost of my abilities. However, if this confused, misdirected control-freak of a high school teacher and so-called professional asks for anything other than this, he can quite frankly shove it up his ass. I deserve to hold my office, and any outcome but that is an outrage and a mockery of the educational system in all its glorious flaws.

UPDATE: As of today, 9/24/10, our lab instructor decided to keep us all on board as class officers. Damn right.

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Out of the Blender, Into the Microwave

Gah. Another wonderful Tuesday on the front lines of high school. Trouble with Ex-Girlfriend, grades, sickness, and blah-blah-blah-please-shoot-me.

Some of you folks at home might be thinking, " Shouldn't this imbecile at least have some of his life together? He's a senior, and by Jove I remember when I was a senior and how easy it was. It was back in nineteen-aught-nine, and the creation of the automobile..."

Hey, Grandpa, shut the hell up. I swear to God if one more person tells me the good ole "If I had half the brains you had when I was your age" story again, I will hijack the special-needs bus and drive it into a preschool.

But anyway, back to ze meat and potatoes, yes?

I just recently got over being bent over and taught a lesson by the common cold, and boy oh boy let me tell you...I still haven't developed the motivational skills for make-up work. I like to procrastinate. It works for me. So how am I supposed to put off something until the last minute when said something was due yesterday? Really, c'mon!

Then there's my home life, which is a pretty accurate example of what would have happened if Pearl Harbor had occurred in my comfy-cozy suburban Ohio neighborhood instead of Hawaii. I've got my lovely parents and their hot mess of a divorce, (God willing I don't die of old age before that little comedy finally ends) with Mom living over on Easy Street, bitching about how she won't be getting a few of her four-hundred-BUHJILLION dollar paychecks and how her new $700 toy poodle/inbred rat can't grasp the concept of shitting outside. Even her intellectually-questionable daughter could figure that little conundrum out.

Meanwhile, Dad and I struggle to make ends meet here in our shack, which Mom somehow finds astounding despite the fact that she has a fucking Masters degree in nursing or health or some other thing and Dad works part-time at the local Home Depot. Yeah, whine about your expenses while me and the old man are flipping furniture searching for enough change to buy a gallon of milk. *rips out hair*

As if all this weren't fun and jovial enough, I get to school today and discover that I'm failing environmental science. Before you write me off as a hopeless moron who will forever spend his life flailing around like a cat trapped behind the refrigerator, let me break that specific class down for you:

Environmental Science: Average Class Schedule

*Get to class
*Pick up clipboard and tree identifier packet (If you don't understand the hilarity behind this little nugget of gold, go here)
*Trek like four and a half miles outside of the school property to look at some trees that we probably have RIGHT OUTSIDE THE BUILDING
*Listen to the teacher stumble around blindly muttering things like "Does it have lobes?" and "Look at the stems...look at the stems..." under her breath like some sort of possessed tree-hugging drug addict.
*Wonder who in the hell thought of making this a full-credit course
*Go back to the school building
*Rinse and repeat every other day for a well-balanced brainwashing regimen.

Yep, that's right. They pay our teacher a REAL paycheck to pretend she can teach. I think this woman is something like twenty-eight or twenty-nine, and she doesn't know her asshole from a hole in the ground. I'm failing a class, FULL-CREDIT mind you, because I didn't know the difference between a southern live oak and a northern live oak. That's the high school I get to go to, Grandpa. *facepalm*

Finally we have the matter of Ex-Girlfriend. Woo-boy, this one's a doozy. Let me enlighten you with a snippet of conversation between her and I.

Ex-Girlfriend: But I do love you!

Me: Why are you with [insert asshole] then?

Ex-Girlfriend: (in strangely parrot-like voice) 'Cuz.

Me: Why?

Ex-Girlfriend: 'Cuz.

Me: ...Why?

Ex-Girlfriend: ...'Cuz.

Me: GAH! CHRIST!

Ex-Girlfriend: 'Cuz? 'Cuz? *commences to pick the bugs out of her feathers*

You can pretty much imagine the rest.

Well, until the next time world...enjoy.

Friday, September 17, 2010

Burning the Midnight Fuel, And Then Some

Well world, it's currently 2:23 AM and I have absolutely nothing productive to do. So I thought I'd share a conversation I had today between myself and a close friend.

Her: Well, I'm far from perfect...

Me: Isn't everybody? I mean, if we take you for instance...

Her: ...

Me: Like, you aren't my type AT ALL. And you're pretty short, which isn't a quality I find appealing. Plus you tan. Ick.

Her: *stares*

Me: But hey, look at it this way man. You might not be everybody's perfect, but you're certainly somebody's perfect. Know what I mean?

Her: Yeah. That was pretty deep dude. How am I supposed to know who that somebody is?

Me: Eh...process of elimination? Guess and check?

Her: *rolls eyes*


Thursday, September 16, 2010

Days Of Our 12th Grade Lives

I used to have this little creed or motto or  mantra  or what have you that I would remind myself of whenever I made a big mistake. "A lesson learned isn't always a lesson applied". It's relatively original, as far as my half-assed in-depth Google query was able to confirm. Well, as things would have it I once again decided to go swimming in the deep end of the pool, and it made me think: is a lesson ever really learned when it costs you nothing? I guess its sort of like free stuff versus stuff you bust your ass to have, and the difference in how you might value one over the other. I like to think I work hard for my screw-ups, especially the really ugly, "oh-man-Chris-is-really-effed-now" ones.

Things are getting crazy, as of late. It seems with every new year the bad choices I make compound themselves, growing larger and dumber as time progresses, a lot like my older sister or the population of the United States. I'm turning eighteen in a week and change, and I feel the weight of responsibility compounding in a similar way as each day is ticked off the calendar. My choices are beginning to cost me quite a bit. It was a sobering wake up call to hear the news today that two of my friends, amici, partners in crime, etc etc, are being charged with class 5 felonies for an undisclosed offense. That's big-kid jail, folks. They're both barely any older than me, and they're looking at a two year bid in a state prison, at the very least.

I suppose I knew this would happen eventually, but never this close to home. It guess its sort of like car accidents, or alien abductions, or cancer. You always hear about it and think "That's never going to happen to a guy like me". Then BAM! Life kicks you right in the proverbial cajones. I'm realizing its time to really start living by that motto, that this lesson learned needs to be applied.