I Don’t Know Why This City Sleeps

With a buzz and a bust I must bus home.

 

Windy Wendy went wearily wobbling.

Wobble windy and wear all white.

White Wendy wipes wet water.

Water so wet. Wet water wet.

Wendy weeps and sleeps in a city steep.

 

A way to air the airables again and again.

Again aghast a ghost a goon.

Airily the airy air, is heir to heirs of eerie air.

All together Avery.

Avery a voracious adventurer.

 

Bit busy to bust open the bust.

Bury the bust and bustle of bust.

Bustle of bust buying busty-busted busts.

Buzz, beep, boing, bonkers.

Billy bounces off the banister.

Andertholic Neanderthal. Under all is in-aliable.

Against the adjunct age of angst.

Angst is against all afflictions.

Afflictions that age with addictions.

Annie is aged with addiction.

 

Again again again again.

A gain again against all gains.

All gains are gained away in a way.

A way is a way if a way is a way.

Amber ain’t at all ahead in her head.

 

Busted again. Buster gets the bust.

Buster’s bust is busted.

Broken busted bust of buster?

But Billy clubs barely busted her.

Billy clubbed Buster and busted her.

 

Idolatry is ideally idol.

I don’t idolize idols.

I dulled out idols of eyeballs.

Eyeballs see idols and idle.

Ida has idle wide eyeballs.

 

Mustard is musty.

Musty mustard must be.

Must be musty mustard.

Make me my mustiest mustard.

Manny makes mustier mustard.

 

Busy bastard burying bags of bananas.

Bonkers bastard, but bought a bag of bananas.

Believe it. But bananas are bonkers bastards.

Burying bananas…so bonkers.

Bob – the old bonkers bastard – gone bananas.

 

Hell in a hand basket.

Handheld basket of hell.

Held hands in a hand basket.

Hands held in a basket in hell.

Helen, had handy hands held hard round a basket in hell.

 

I don’t know why this city sleeps.

A Portrait Of John McCain

Courageous as a kumquat if kumquats are courageous.

Would you could you will you won’t you? Won’t you don’t you

Will you won’t? If a lion is alien, his stance so ostentatious,

Would he call us Friends F-R-I-E-N-D. friend E-N-D friend, round two.

Around you too many two’s are too you, to you and I-

Dol I, doe-eye, do I? I do. Not you.

Suffice to say the ice decays. The ice decays suffice the si-

Zed, Zero, Zen Zune, Zroom Neurooom Boom.

Take a stance askance romance.

Romance the dance and take the chance.

One wife, one woman whoa wowowow, what?

Can Palin play if Clinton lays? Palin pays McCain:

McCain McCan McTrust in-McSperience.

Decay today the ice decays suffice the ice today decays.

And shorten and shorten and shorten and shrink.

Raise hands, give a hand, no hands giving a hand in Hanoi, handkerchief chief.

IV oh me, we need IV. 

 

McCain died in office today, and a wolf-killing neo-con took hold of the reigns.

 

A giant alliant allied to the giant. We die we lie today we die. Today we die if today we lie, oh aye-di-daye-di-daye-di-daye-di-daye-di-daye-di-daye. We die if today. We die, we die, we die, we die we die we die. When we die we know they lie they lie to die and die.

and when the wind is when we win who wins when wind is when we win and “the answer my friend is blowing in the wind.

 

And if the polls are told to stroll,

Surround the ostentatious droll.

Southern drawl is drawn in all.

In all we see the southern drawl.

All in all is all we are. all we are is all in all we all know all are all. in all if all in all is all. in all. Altogether all in all. All my love is lost in all; is lost in Medicare and all. In Medicare and Medicate and medicine and Mediwar and Medimight and medical and get the medic soldier.

 

Telegram:

Selling souls to save stop save the selling of souls stop stepping up soul selling for salesmen stop salesmen sell souls for soles stop the souls of soles are sold in Saipan stop stop stop stop S-T-O-P

 

My country ‘tis of thee sweet land of thee and ’tis.

McCain Smiles:

Friends,

My country, right or wrong. 

For Gertrude Stein

Stein, how so? Stein how? So so

Stein. So stein so. So what, Stein?

How quick ma makes money.

Melancholy ma. Melancholy Money Ma

Ma quick marry Money.

POW-MIA Stein, where P-O-W M-I-A?

She is so quick so she so quick.

So quick POW-MIA Marry merrily modern merry.

Silence to serendipity.

Serendipitously silent.

Silently slip serendipitously

down the stairwell.

How is Stein so how is Stein so How is Stein so so

No longer singing serendipity.

So no longer singing quick.

So no longer singing.

So no longer so no so so so sssssssss.

Flair up and up end up in flair. End up in flair

And flare indubitably and indubitably.

Indubitably dutiful to Stein so dutifully indubitable.

Indubitably Stein. In so as so Stein, how so?

Indubitably Stein.

 

Part One of a Courtroom Sonnet Series

I

 

What did they say in courtroom three-o-two

When one man’s life had been subjected to

A systematic slaughter in the clink

Where cuffs like couplets tore through his cufflinks

 

And turned one strong black man into chattel?

 I watched through the door, heard his chains rattle

Beats from a song sung by qunta quinte

But he did not scream ‘gives us free’ that day.

 

And I saw in his muscles the power

Restrained, confined hour on hour

While a ‘justice system’ cried first degree-

The melody of an all white jury.

 

The record that I read was disfigured.

“convicted.,,” I heard “Hang the nigger.”

Marie

Marie and I went out for coffee today. That’s exactly what we had. Coffee; Nothing more, nothing less. She didn’t know that I was just aching for an excuse to get lost in her gorgeous hair just one more time. In her warm, friendly embrace, I tried to hide my passion – my love.
We sat down and caught up. She was mellow, polite, cordial, and did everything in her power to make this moment as normal as possible. It was not hard for me. I had resolve. I would stare into her eyes, savor her good nature, and mope around the house for a couple hours later on in the day. I asked her:
“What’s Alicia Doing nowadays?”
“She’s an accountant. I don’t see how she doesn’t blow her head off, it’s such a boring job, but that’s just Ally.”
She sipped her coffee, and looked out the window. With her same old concern she asked:
“How’s Jake?”
As many times as I’d heard the question, this time didn’t make it any easier.
“He’s alive, but that barely describes him.”
She grabbed the pot from the center of the table and topped of my white, ceramic cup. I tried to push Jake out of my mind for now, and focus on this one little, stolen moment. Marie was only in the country for a couple of days. She had to fly to Brazil before heading back to France, so I only had a couple of hours. She set the pot down and smiled at me. She said how well I looked.
“It’s the California sun. People turn colors out here you could never imagine in France.”
She laughed, and I laughed. It was the sweetest, most savory, tingling, butterflies in the stomach laugh I had ever laughed. It was the remedy for my woes. It was also the catalyst which ignited my belief that maybe she might still feel something. I searched her face for another hint. God, California was too filthy a place for this beautiful Goddess. Starbuck was a smirch on her reputation. The United States were not civilized enough for her countenance. And I, I could have been just a little better in bed for her liking. Nut no, I wasn’t too bad (thanks to my partial Latin roots).
“You know, Jake asks about you every time I visit. He said he’d make sure I burned in hell if I didn’t tell you he’s still waiting for that kiss.”
She blushed. I wasn’t really sure what it meant, and had no idea how to press the issue.
“Tell Jake,” she said, “that he is most assuredly up on my list.”
There was my opening:
“And who’s on top of that list?”
She took what I felt to be an ill placed sip of her coffee.
“My fiancé.”
I took what she probably assumed to be a necessary sip of my coffee. That solved that question. She was getting married, and I would probably sit in one of the back rows, trying not to sob like a drunken asshole, later on turning into a blubbering drunken asshole at the reception. So I looked into her eyes, and thought to myself fuck it. You’ve got only so many years on this planet, are you going to pass on the only opportunity to stop her from marring this asshole?
“Congratulations. I certainly hope you’ll invite me to the wedding.”
“Do you really want to be there Sam?”
No. No I did not.
“Of course.”
My subconscious was going to kick my ass with a bottle of Rum when I got home. Marie felt all of this. My chest had been pried apart. Nothing was secret anymore.
“Love can only stretch so far, Sam.”
I wasn’t trying to learn a lesson at the time. I knew all of the circumstances and the limits and the differences, but I was too caught up on the similarities to see the truth. I tried to close up. I tried to stick with the matter at hand:
“So, where are you having the wedding?”
Marie refilled her cup.
“In Chartres. And I would be delighted if you came.”
We continued the small talk. Apparently this man’s name was Jean. And I was sure the typical Jean was going to match quite badly with the lovely, smart, funny Marie quite terribly. I said nothing.
I hugged her one last time, and this time it was the pain of half a planet’s distance keeping us apart that made the moment so strong. It was the closing of the door of opportunity – the sealing of the window of our romance.

There was a message on the answering machine when I got home, and I called Marie immediately.
“Yes Sam?
“Marie, I- I have to – oh god.”
What is it Sam?
“It’s uh – it’s Sam, he-“
I couldn’t say it.
“I’ll cancel my flight. I’m coming over Sam. Just have a drink and I’ll be there as fast as I can.

I closed my eyes, and bowed my head, and prayed to my God.

      God, I don’t pray as much as I should. I’m sorry for whatever I’ve done. Please let mom be wrong. Please let Jack be okay. And if he’s not, please…give him back…

Live

School will come and go.
It is the lovers turned friends
and friends turned lovers
that will be remembered.

It is the hard times
and the hands held
and the cards dealt
and the money lost.

It is the tragedy
and the comedy
and the fate
and the future

Overall, it is the experiences
and the inexperience
and the experimentation
and the excrement that is thrown at us.

Life is the loud noises
and the sad silences
and the biting kisses
from people you do not sympathize with.

Life is the death of our own mental slavery
life is the enslavement of the beast of time.
Life works for those who work it.
Work lives for those who know not how to live.

Still,

Work hard,
Live long,
Kiss gently,
die strong.

Caress the back of the unknown lover
Hold tight the shoulders of a wary friend.
Kiss the lips of the life-long light-hearted.
Perhaps, your own heart will be lightened.

Climb a tree.
Or a rock.
Spill your blood
while the people around you applaud in amazement.
For your show is theirs.

Fight wars overseas,
or under sheets.
Scratch the former,
anticipate the latter.

Deny the rules.
Defy the rules.
Satisfy the soul
by drinking deep the natural liquor of life
to obtain a drunkard’s enlightened stupor.

Above all, live every day
expecting, and willing,
to give your last breath of life,
in the same world of wonder as you gave your first.

Drive

She loved the sound of Cobain’s voice. I adored the sounds of hers. And we both loved the taste of a long drawn cigarette in a short lived moment. Our lives weren’t long at the time, and they seemed to be getting shorter. We enjoyed the precious little pleasures while debating the world’s preposterous pressures. All the while she kept sneaking glances at my button down shirt; the one with brown and gray dampened stripes that seemed to fade into the musky gray background, reminding me of Rocky Road Ice Cream.
“It’s an interesting shirt.”
“I found it in a box on the side of the road in New Orleans.”
She laughed. I laughed. We stole another precious moment, seizing the opportunity to sacrifice another five minutes of our lives for the stress relief that the cigarette companies guaranteed. They weren’t liars. They were right. I was going to die. Happily. She smoked slims, I smoked 100’s; a Virginia girl and a Marlboro man, face to face in an L.A. delicatessen. Well, an L.A. Starbucks with a view. The fresh brewed coffee played off the smoke, and gave life to the room; the sort of life that you would assume permanently encapsulated the life of James Dean, until, well, he drove his Porsche off the road after doing a driving safety video. Either way, we lived like nu veau Deans, and we dreamed of crashing our Porsches in order to go out in just such a blaze of glory. Unfortunately, we would have to settle for something much less expensive. Tangent. Back to my shirt.
She had seen one like it before. I had worn it before. I asked her where she’d been, and told her where I’d been. We’d both never been. I had lied about New Orleans to make the conversation more interesting. The silence wasn’t awkward. It was long, dreamy, hopeful and sad. It was a silence that screamed “get me the fuck out of LA!” and it was a pause the sparked a spurrious conclusion.
She put out her cigarette in the tastefull Starbucks tray next to the three cigarettes that already had occupied it, and, grabbing my hand, we stood up.
“Let’s get the fuck out of LA.” she said. And we began our planning. First, she wanted to make on honest man out of me, so we picked up a map in a gas station, and hit the road for New Orleans.
She drove, and I rode bitch. Twenty and licenseless. In order to pass the time, I continued the conversation about my shirt: where I got it, why I liked it, how much it cost, and my consideration for buying another just like it.
“If you say one more thing about that god damn shirt you’re riding in the engine compartment.”
I did not say one more thing about my god damned shirt, and the ride proved to be much more pleasant. As we drove, we smoked. As we smoked, we died. As we thought about death, we really needed another cigarette. The topic of conversation soon rolled around to expenses. I had twelve bucks and a deck of playing cards. She was brutally attractive and on good terms with her father. We weren’t going to have to worry.
In love, lust, or luck we left our homes and lives with nothing but a fake story of a scholarship opportunity and a cooler full of capri-suns, in hopes of going someplace just for the sake of saying we’d been some place. A few hundred miles ahead and a long trail of ash behind, life was good. It may have been short, but for the next week, it would feel oh so long.

Her name was either Jennifer or Jane. His was something along the lines Daniel. Jane was a beautiful ray with porcelain complexion and long locks eschewing any possibility of negativity in her world. Brushing up against her lips would feel like moist rose pedals, and her eyes, when she was sad, would sink down inside and darken to the more aggressive shades of green. When she was happy, they would light up without having changed that hypnotic color, and they would beam through everything around her. She was long, luxurious, and lovely, even with a cigarette hanging daintily from her lower lip. The smoke from the stick was as sensual as sin, and the bitter fragrance only made her more exotic; more uncontrollably desirable. The light tremble of her fingers taking the cigarette as she relaxed between drags was like the ecstatic shiver that runs down every man’s spine when the woman they want gently brushes against their shoulder. She was preposterously pretty and cordially canonical; like candy and coffee to the brain and soul.
Daniel was pudgy and shaved once a week. The two of them had wonderful conversations about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness (sex). They also spoke about morality (it’s not fair unless you go down on her too.) And popularity (size does matter).
The day waned into night and the line on the highway in Jane or Jennifer’s pretty blue eyes got longer and longer; blurrier and blurrier. They had money but none to spare, so they pulled off to the side of the road. Aquafina, Cheetos, and cigarettes maintained their voracious appetites. They side on the hood of her navy blue Volvo, and took a look around. They hadn’t given much thought to where they were going. It was about ten P.M., and they’d been driving for a good four hours. A look around revealed an enormous fucking parking lot.
“Where are we?” Inquired Daniel, who had never seen such an enormous fucking parking lot. Jennifer – possibly Jane – took out her palm pilot and checked the on board GPS.
“Quartzsite, Arizona.”
Daniel puffed thoughtfully. “What’s there to see in Quartzsite, Arizona?”
“The world’s largest parking lot.”
“I’d kind of like to see that.”
“There it is.”
“That’s an enormous fucking parking lot.”
In light of recent observation, they decided to spend their peaceful November night parked in the lot, which had a ten dollar fee. When they woke in the morning, they found the enormous fucking parking lot transformed into an enormous fucking flee market. And as Daniel wiped the sand from his eyes, he wept a little bit, for this was the stuff of dreams. The bargains, the buyers, the sellers, the traders. Music and Churro wafted through the air, and his stomach rumbled. Jane-ifer concluded that, since they were going to be their for a while, they may as well stock up on some needed supplies.
Walking through the rows upon rows upon rows upon rows upon rows…
Upon rows upon rows, they managed great bargains on a glowing plastic rosary and a box of old records that someone’s ex-husband probably wanted back desperately. With the necessities out of the way, they proceeded to pick up the eccentricities of water and food, and a bottle of tylenol, which they were assured was not tylenol, thus guaranteeing that it was tylenol and not anything good. November is cold in Arizona, but that doesn’t matter to the Arizona sun. It burns in cold or heat, and the ground is quick to reflect. They got back to a sweltering leather interior car, and found that the engine was too cold to start. The perplexing paradoxy did nothing but delay their exit.
They smoked and they drank, and they heckled passers-by. Another hour found them drunk, haggard, and forced to spend another night in the enormous fucking parking lot. Fortunately, Arizona sunsets were beautiful. Like LA, the smog settled into the basins and made for spectacular color gradients and dazzling shimmers and shines. Their was no sea salt to accent the night with a cool and fresh scent, but the sky was larger and the people were quieter. The parking lot cleared late in the day and they hit the road with a sense of a fresh start and a real sense of detachment. Pointless as say “I slept in America’s largest parking lot” may be, it was still something that could not be said for many. The rules of sights and roads were skewed from that moment on. Completely free to see all that was around them, the two wanderers saw all that was around them.
Daniel was sullenly quiet as the road passed by. A night on an Arizona highway was different. Hughes of red painted the rhe rock walls that jettisoned from the ground. Cactus abounded; the real kind that you buy at Lowe’s or Green Thumb Nursery. They were hideous in their natural habitat, but when you thought about them, all that came to mind was how each time the cactus branched represented another hundred year. Damn near every cactus they saw was older than Daniel and Jane combined. He would die before they would, but they would stay in their place, storing water only to be raped of it by cruel birds and desert moochers. Daniel gathered as he grazed, and he left not a crumb at his way-side.
He mentioned to Jane as his thoughts drifted, “ People don’t do this.”
“Don’t do what?” she asked.
Half speaking to himself, Daniel continued, “They don’t drop their lives off at Starbucks and hit the road.”
“Well maybe they’re all wrong.”
That seemed to be the most plausible explanation. The world was wrong, and they were right to roam and not contribute; to treasure the things crafted by those without the privilege to enjoy their own creations.
“Don’t you think it’s selfish to take advantage of a world that we haven’t contributed a single thought to?”
Jane or Jennifer had never thought of it that way. Her Dad worked hard so that she wouldn’t have to. She would go to school and see the world the way Kerouak and Whitman saw it. She loved and adored the world she saw, and wish that everyone could, but her tragedy was her lack of solution, or the where-with-all to contrive one.
“Fuck ‘em.” She said. And they fucked ‘em and kept driving.

Sweat Shirts, sweated words.

A conversation I cannot hear.

A door I dare not enter.

It is a cold day in December

and the heater bill is through the roof.

I know what it means

to be alone in a crowded place.

Another man’s voice pounds in my head

reminding me of another woman.

The essence of excess.

A tear drop my tongue failed to lap up.

The lights of the Christmas tree have burned night and day.

Another beautiful woman stretches eagerly in its presence.

People come and go, go and come,

always wearing a new pair of shoes.

Of all the women,

in all the malls,

in all of California,

I have chosen the obsequious one.

Pig tails, pony tails, buns, braids,

No child wants to be on the naughty list for Christmas.

But all Children are.

When is it acceptable to chew gum?

When you step in another man’s shoes,

would Gold Bond be advisable?

I am lost in the garrulous tones of a population gone awry.

Does anyone around me realize that I am a man of high aspirations?

We are the first penmanship to develop good penmanship by three,

and incinerate it by twelve.

LMAO

We no longer have stores, we have shopping experiences.

The cheesy Christmas music remains the same.

I want to ride a beautiful woman,

but they are all saddled by hideous men.

I write with one eye on my paper,

the other on you.

I am Walt Whitman’s soul

incarnate as an outbreak of ebola.

I can’t stand fortunate children.

They make for an unfortunate future.

Men should cry more.

Women are cruel, cruel beasts…

Whom I worship completely.

I love you, woman of another man’s fantasy.

You’ll dance with me, kiss my lips,

but tell me you are his?

It is unfair and unjust.

Kiss me one more time and profess that you do not love me.

My pain is yours, so why do you not scream with me?

If we scream together, we will scream no more.

And when we finally grow old, your wrinkles will be my joy.

Your aches will be my groans.

So let your hips touch my hips,

And I will give you all of me, all the time.

You may think you love your novio,

but I will make you my novia,

when you see freely what is true.

My writing may be chicken scratch,

but my words will ring in your ears

until the glass that separates us

is a melted, molded, sobbing mass on the floor.

I will not step over the glass because you will come to me.

And you will apologize, but I will not accept it.

Because from then on, our future will not be concerned with our past.

We will disavow the un-ashed tip of the cigarette,

and burn down the rest of our lives in the most romantic of forms,

consumed by the most juvenile love.

Where are the stars?

Where are the stars?

A new era dawns a new way to light up the night sky.

Geysers of life’s elixir travel through copper tubes,

issuing forth like so many streams of emancipation,

there is a rhythm to their chaos.

Birds nest in a plastic tree.

Four gorgeous women sit on a bench

Is it they or the bench that is more manufactured?

The oranges, blues, and greens that pastel the horizon are not

made of the same pure elements they once were.

We are a nation of suburban cowboys.

Giddy-up.

When Sagittarius rises over the Ford dealership,

we are all going to die.

The diesel twinkie billows noxious vapors

to suffocate the Arco Gods.

6-B Oxnard Via Telephone Road.

Is their a constant ration of gum to cigarette butts at a given bus stop?

America:

“Claiming propriety over municipal waste since 1632.”

There is a strange connection between bus stops and drug deals.

Why?

It’s like a horror film looking through a SCAT Bus window;

like an HBO drama listening to the conversations.

The payphone is the purveyor of the plague.

The payphone has worn out the digits C-A-L-L-A-T-T.

Bus eleven pulls away.

I hop on my alternative mode of transportation and follow suit.

Vapor of nerd stings the nostrils.

I am surrounded by 6′ by 10′ boxes,

marked with the latest gaming titles.

If you live life through a fantasy,

achieving what you never could in reality,

and obtaining the same euphoria,

have you really wasted any time?

I salute you, nerds.

Sex, video games, and cheeseburgers

all yield the same chemical result.

But only one burns calories.

The youth of America yearn for the latest SpongeBob game.

Daddy wants to please this Christmas.

“Daddy please?…Daddy can I?”

“Maybe later…we’ll see…ask your mother.”

Halls are no longer decked with bowels of Holly,

but the blood of Christmas past.

Jesus was never a main character in a video game.

Thou shalt not engrave false idols, right?

Separation of church and game play.

No one in this store has a girlfriend.

But they all speak clingon.

Does anybody have a pencil?

An after hours education in the halls of an institution.

Why are the Gatorade bottles locked up

while drugs pass freely from hand to hand?

We have made our schools for the handicapped,

and the pen cap chewers.

Have I learned more now in this instance of trespassing,

than in all my culminated days locked within an institution?

These benches are cold in the November air.

But my thoughts are warm; my belly full.

My mind is jumping from place to place;

a teenager on a shooting spree.

The un-ashed tip of a cigarette will become the unsolved mystery

of the fire department.

Children should not play with matches,

but they should learn to shoot a gun.

This is what I’ve learned from school.

Why is their not a school of graffiti?

The urban art is the last true writing on the wall.

Though it is dark,

the stars still refuse to shine.

The modern American lives in a perpetual twilight.

In the day we dwell in doors,

The cities light up the night.

The earth illuminates,

extinguishing those heavenly flames

and becoming a physical metaphor for atheism:

Man has closed heaven until he has satisfied his urges.

In the morning we will all attend church as if nothing has happened.

To skate is not a crime,

but to ride around the mall causing mischief

while your baked out of your skull…

Is fun.

I don’t smoke pot.

But if I did…

I’m sitting in a gutter behind Lowe’s,

and I can hear rats scurrying in the bushes.

There is trash all around me,

and the freeway is in the distance.

Am I living now?

Happily?

I see one star beyond a parking lot light,

and feel that it deserves interpretation.

It is a desperate, dying breath from God,

trying to speak to me.

Volumes have been written about his message,

but he sums it up in three words:

Love Everybody Unconditionally.One day I will.This urban Jungle is a unique blend of concrete and industrialized plants.

Everywhere I’ve been, I have seen a palm tree,

but not one has thrown its leaves at my feet.

Grass blades spout from the sewer.

I see the forest through the trees,

which is the sole benefit of clear-cutting.

My fingers are cold.

My Joints; stiff.

I am dying.

Slowly, I am dying.

And old fat man is skating with a beer in his hand.

He is a slave succumbing to alcoholism,

The driver of desperate men.

What is the penalty for drunken boarding?

DUI

I can use a drink.

I will return here another day.

Hip-hop flows from a solara

like water from a faucet.

Rough and easy.

It quiets down, and so does my writing.

Rap is the voice of the urban poet,

and the urban poet has no name.

World ‘round the same struggle is fought,

but no one words it the same.

Classical is cliche’ stimulation for infants.

Rap is the edge of an angry people.

Polished Punk.

America has a new song to sing to.

The urban rhythm is an expansion of the mind;

a war waged on a multifaceted front.

We have all defiled the same soil.

You cannot write of life from a roll top desk.

Experience is the law of the written land,

America is the youth of the world,

rooting its experimentation in the unknown.

I too, sing america.

I sit aside my darker brother at the human table,

He does not mention yesterday.

Today, I pledge my life to the cause of humanity as it lies in the cracks.

Tomorrow, we will have our exodus.

The lights will go out,

and the stars will return, bringing with it the religion we have blinded.

Women: i got nothin’

I can’t think of any good way to start off this essay, so I will say this. I love a passionate, foolish, foolhardy, ignorant, short, disdainful, irrelevant, and downright secular fling with a woman I hardly know, but if I were offered one thousand of such an experience, against one thought out, intelligent, mature, wise, long lasting, purposeful and matrimonial relationship, I think I would take the one. I will even go so far as to say that if I were offered one year with a woman who would stick by my side, but was ill-fated to an early demise, as opposed to two lifetimes of the world’s most beautiful woman at my door, I think I would spend a week mulling things over, before resorting to a year by my one love’s side.
I am a foolish human being who gives way to instincts before thought in all the areas that such notions should inverse, but I know what I want, and I know that I am the wrong person to go looking for it. When I look at a woman, I look through clouded eyes, and I cannot discern the forest through the trees. I am my father’s son. The son of a father who has been married three (but engaged four) times, all because he is quick on the draw with the question. Arranged marriages? How far are you dragging the concept? I don’t care. I’ll accept. Slap a good woman round my arm and I’ll be set for life. But what is a good woman? My idea entails something to the effect of someone I can talk to, and someone who I can wake up next to every morning, and still expect to see something new. I don’t care if I spend years getting to know her in courtship, or in matrimony, as long as I get the chance. Whether she be beautiful or not so much within the guidelines of such a word; whether she’s twenty pounds under, or four-hundred pounds on the deep end, she’s still my pretty little thing, and if I have to get down and say it for her to believe me, she’ll tell me that that’s what I have to do and damn it, I’ll do it. But I’m getting off topic. Who am I to say I am any better at finding this woman than any body else? I walk the same line as the men who tread the roadside sobriety test before me. What I mean to say is that we all fall short of the straight and narrow every once in a while, and whether the reason is my choice, or that of another, poor, reckless, incompetent soul, doesn’t make much of a difference.
Ask me if I’d mind an arranged marriage and I will tell you sure, but only under the guise of a happily married couple. I don’t want Joe Bachelor lassoing me into a game of ‘pin the ring on the barfly’. If your going to plan my life, show me what you’ve don e with yours. Everything is circumstantial, and I don’t care if I may have contradicted myself by now because this is not the standard essay. This is what comes to mind, and what five cups of rootbeer has made me feel.
I’d love to love the one I’m meant to love, but I believe that if you can’t be with the one you love, than love the one you’re with. And if you can’t love the one you’re with, don’t pop the question because you’re anxious to tie the know before the important bits stop working. To paraphrase Ben Franklin, the sweetest bits go sour last. I’d like to take this moment to thank Mr. Geib for sharing that most interesting quote with the class.
I will trust a wise man’s judgement, but I will never marry a woman that can’t spell Mississippi, though I certainly will not hesitate to love one. Love knows no bounds, and it is a universal language which no one wrote a dictionary for. With this question, I’m all across the board, and in the end, I’ll take whatever comes my way, and spend a lot of time thinking it over; at least once every 3.5 seconds. It’s the nature of the male. So come on, oh female of the species! The two kinds of your breed beget the pious and the pompous. And both are fine with me. For now, show me the pious. Let me have the fun an ignorant fool will have. And when I grow up, let me find the one that I have so sorely been seeking. If the two at some point should prove one in the same, God be praised for a miracle hath befallen this retched soul! Either way, I’m easy. I’m the little tramp, just trying to keep his hat on his head and his cane in his hand. Give me a quarter, I’ll show you a trick. But give me your hand, and I’ll never let go. I’ll meet the one you bring to me, but the end decision is my own. I can’t think of a very good way to end this essay either.