‘I’m With Them’

This is a draft page from my collection that will be out in the fall. I did a video recording of it on the streets of Chicago but I had to sell my mobile device so I only have this audio recording. As it’s, well now yesterday, the birthday of Hunter S. Thompson, this is read in his name for all he stood against in the name of decency. Below the audio recording you will find the text. It is a draft. Thank you.

 

Another name. Another word. Another tenor warms those two cold lips, places them to the metal duck piece, as the drum beat slowly rips apart the ears without regret.

And…just…great, and this is the greatest of all great lost generations, because they’re lost in front of everyone who cares to pay attention to that which is not, themselves.

Another night. Who knows what word I should use, because really it doesn’t matter. The whole house is shaking, and you can hear it all the way up here, three stories up.

Windows rattle and nails much too long bitten like a mouse eating crackers in cupboard, and damn, how can you get any work done? And silence? Never.

Awoken by an entire band playing, from the foes that push you to the breaking point and ask why, why, how come, you and you, and what, only silence, from you, not them; the voices always ask you why, as oh what’s the use I said as I pretend to be helpless with shrugged shoulders and more yelling and snap; how dare you speak up for yourself?

How dare they, ask me these questions that are none of their business. A fire in my eyes and waiting for me to fall into their grasp, and I want to fall, but love keeps me in-line… for a while…until… that is, I can no longer feel the aimless shame of their clumsy hell.

And I wake up, finally I’m here, silence, and it’s three a.m., and I feel this burden of art, because spring is coming and the old work must be done.

Work until sunrise and go to bed for a few and I know that I’m going to have to leave soon. Pressure seeping through my veins like maple syrup collected into buckets to serve for tasty treats, and only another rare form of entertainment. Only an overdose of sugar so stamina is stored for the trap to be built for me to fall into when they want to catch a lion, again.

Fuzzy hands and fuzzy mind, and it took all day to be able to get myself to do this, and the vocal chords shout on the same cliff where Jesus tempted the Devil. Just like our history, everything has always been mixed up. Nobody knows what happened to whom anymore. Well, not really anyway.

Days and the organization of my failed dreams all damn day. Sweeping and returning and swearing as I hit toes on corners of wood doors that plotted my stubbing before I was even born. Ha. They’ve been waiting…

And I was looking at piles of neatly stacked papers and folders full of editing proofs. My office is as neat as a rose garden, and now it’s once again the night and the box-score keepers have all went to bed, and so none of it matters for a while, at least while, they sleep.

The light and the full moon of dark eyes, the athleticism of the spectator with this onslaught of sports, the of this versus, the of that, and this lame circular argument that speculates and constantly worries about who’s winning? And well, who is winning? Do you know Andrew the kid said after he walked in my house yelling that he was going to kill him some cops because they arrested his girlfriend for being a spoiled child.

He asked me the score of us vs. society. I said, I’m not us, and that, I don’t care. I’m not keeping score, and can you hear that? No, there’s nothing, and at last… thank goodness, and I say that stuttered sigh of relief because finally the Greek legends and the Roman Empire, this hip fucking counter culture and the self-proclaimed delusion of this art renaissance; oh man at last they have all grown tired and fallen…dead weights…always, but now, they don’t speak.

All the conditions of what I have never been and will always be not that… On and on and the conversation gets too boring for me to even feel the need to argue against or for, myself or you, neither the left nor, the wrong.

All of these screeching slow tires and slow record players over and over playing forever all of these buzz words; an infinite loop of reverberating mix downs of hot sheets of useless excuses for the terminology of what people do when they are waiting for their lunch break. All of this chit-chat and this, is, what you are. The talking about fringe mathematicians and the supposed dilemma of the cursed writer, or so says David Foster Wallace, that the shame of looking naïve in a knowledge based world is just too much for the wordsmith to handle, therefore bypassing the search for forgiveness altogether in exchange for having sex, and on, and on and on oh let Christ down from heaven already, because so there you go, there’s the score. Class is dismissed. You can pick up the degree of your choosing by the garbage dump, and please remember, to pay the bank teller, she’s a real slut.

BELL-BELL, and like I said, try to remember to keep calm, because of course I’m only joking Mr. President. I’m Only talkin’ bout’ my generation, about my children’s generation, one in the same and just more of the same, more simulations and small town freaks, the class of what you would call, the students of the savage and doomed. The spread is infinite, the losers don’t have a chance, and I got straight As when it comes to the understanding of this: You know, that I’m fucked for life. Oh well, and so CLAP-CLAP; I might as well get this show on the road, because as some have said, and so it goes, and what is that, this thing that goes? It’s this constant fight with death, in a postmodern world. And huh, yeah, and well this is what He said. I can only say, I guess, because I’m with them, the doomed.

Bed night and death time, well who knows and Yawn…and I don’t have time to argue against the dead, because the ones that are living are waiting for me to speak up and go, go, go, to go and to do, everything that is, new.

One day before I die I was told that I will say that I was the author who wrote the new book of glamour for the postmodern darlings. The ghosts of the modern, the pre-modern and the barbaric with a smidgen of wine from the region of champagne with a side of drenched dying flowers in oil and vinaigrette eaten around folks with such great importance and class speaking such fine echoes of a lost tribe, and one belonging to an era long dead that was said to be so-so-fucking romantic and beat maybe even dare we say, existential.

The book is burned before the end appears, and wishing upon a star and born from the platonic European now writing in the Midwest and skimmed by the sons and daughters of computer game winners; all of these books heralded as classics that will be read in universities and are said to hold the truth of my future dreams that are falling back down to earth and read as far away as who has the time to figure any of this out?

Being read for free and for what this is worth my words have begun to spread all the way towards the bottom of the oceans where the web of digital insomniacs can be heard screaming out loud, but in silence nobody hears the hatred of such absurdly placed telephone wires. Who’s winning? I don’t know. The game? Who knows? But were just about all out of time.

Can you hear that? No? It’s the sound of such delightful sounds—-and without warning, the curtain closes.

You hear that? Nothing. The young philosophers and the wives of future doctors and lawyers have fallen asleep.

Ha, and he was yelling at me; told me that he was going to kill him some cops.

I said bullshit, because it was bullshit. Kid aint going to kill any cops. Kid aint going to do anything about anything. He’s with me, and I’m with…remember? Yeah, the doomed.