and you're just
fashionably intelligent
fashionably elegant
fashionably rude and insincere
fashionably tacky
fashionably childlike, and i hear
theres a genuine streak of goodness in you.
throw in quasi-pseudo, just to be
on the safe side of you.
yes, but id rather be inside of you and you
understand this, i fear.
and wouldnt it be wonderful to bite your skin
oh wouldnt you
wouldnt you let me in-
side your skull?
wouldnt you rather i fingerpick your nylon nerves to shreds
somewhere deep inside do you dread that you
might just enjoy yourself?
and youre just
fashionably calm
politically incorrect
fashionably on the verge of indecency, desperate.
mythology must mean alot to you
choking, clinging
god, i love you.
fashionably straight.

hahahahahahahaha.....

my first Pink Floyd lyrics. there's a story. tell you someday...

through the fish eyed lens of tear stained eyes
i can barely define the shape of this moment in time
and far from flying high in clear blue skies
i'm spiralling down to the hole in the ground where i hide
if you negotiate the minefield in the drive
and beat the dogs and cheat the cold electronic eyes
and if you make it past the shotgun in the hall
dial the combination. open the priesthole
and if i'm in i'll tell you what's behind the wall
there's a kid who had a big hallucination
making love to girls in magazines
he wonders if you're sleeping with your new found faith
could anybody love him
or is it just a crazy dream
and if i show you my dark side
will you still hold me tonight
and if i open my heart to you
and show you my weak side
what would you do
would you sell your story to rolling stone
would you take the children away
and leave me alone
and smile in reassurance
as you whisper down the phone
would you send me packing
or would you take me home
thought i oughta bare my naked feelings
thought i oughta tear the curtain down
i held the blade in trembling hands
prepared to make it but just then the phone rang
i never had the nerve
to make the final cut.

So, so you think you can tell
Heaven from Hell,
Blue skies from pain...
Can you tell a green field
From a cold steel rain?
A smile from a veil?
Do you think you can tell?

And did they get you to trade
Your heroes for ghosts?
Hot ashes for trees?
Hot air for a cool breeze?
Cold comfort for change?
And did you exchange
A walk-on part in the war
For a lead role in a cage?


How I wish, how I wish you were here.
We're just two lost souls
Swimming in a fish bowl,
Year after year,
Running over the same old ground.
What have we found?
The same old fears.
Wish you were here.

i will always return to you.
your name is whispered on the notes of
songs we sang together, in absence.
i will always return to you,
sans fear, guilt, secrecy
your heart being my dark
secret room
tired, endless escape into your lungs
swim smoothly through your veins
fall asleep in the gentle rise
and fall of your chest
you'd carry me around even if
you could barely carry yourself.
and it asks no return,
except all that i give and it
speaks no strange befuddling language of the eyes and the tongue
it just sits, close, warm, compassionate:
beating gently, whispering like trees in the sunshine
this deep, common dialect
of our lives.

-anon, discovered on blather

Part of Your World, Little Mermaid

Look at this stuff
Isn't it neat?
Wouldn't you think my collection's complete?
Wouldn't you think I'm the girl
The girl who has everything?
Look at this trove
Treasures untold
How many wonders can one cavern hold?
Lookin' around here you'd think
Sure, she's got everything

I've got gadgets and gizmos aplenty
I've got whozits and whatzits galore
You want thingamabobs?
I got twenty
But who cares?
No big deal
I want more

I wanna be where the people are
I wanna see
Wanna see 'em dancin'
Walkin' around on those
Whad'ya call 'em? Oh - feet
Flippin' your fins you don't get too far
Legs are required for jumpin', dancin'
Strollin' along down a
What's that word again?
Street

Up where they walk
Up where they run
Up where they stay all day in the sun
Wanderin' free
Wish I could be
Part of that world

What would I give
If I could live
Outta these waters?
What would I pay
To spend a day
Warm on the sand?
Betcha on land
They understand
Bet they don't reprimand their daughters

Bright young women
Sick o' swimmin'
Ready to stand...

And ready to know what the people know
Ask 'em my questions
And get some answers
What's a fire and why does it
What's the word?

Burn

When's it my turn?
Wouldn't I love
Love to explore that shore up above?

Out of the sea
Wish I could be
Part of that world....

in between the usual drivel of positivism and proactivity... the softest, strayest desires for something better... a wisp of a wish, like "far off carnival music", as tenessee williams would put it. like a cool little breeze... and you were so sure all the doors and windows were sealed.

The Laurel and Hardy Love Affair by Ray Bradbury
"Now," she said, "I'm heading for the door. We are very special, wondrous people, Ollie, and I don't think our like will ever come again in the world. But I must go. And now," she reached out. "My hand is on the door and..."
"And," he said, quietly.
"I'm crying," she said.
He started to get up but she shook her head.
"No, don't. If you touch me I'll cave in. I'm going. But once a year I'll show up at our flight of steps, no piano, same hour, same time as that night when we first went there, and if you're there to meet me I'll kidnap you, or you me."
"Stan," he said.
"My God," she mourned.
"What?"
"This door is heavy. I can't move it." She wept. "There. It's moving. There." She wept more. "I'm gone."
The door shut.

....

The Dot and the Line by Norton Juster
"Once upon a time there was a sensible straight line who was hopelessly in love with a dot. 'You're the beginning and the end, the hub, the core and the quintessence,' he told her tenderly, but the frivolous dot wasn't a bit interested, for she only had eyes for a wild and unkept squiggle who never seemed to have anything on his mind at all."

....

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
"...A short time later, when the carpenter was taking measurements for the coffin, through the window they saw a light rain of tiny yellow flowers falling. They fell on the town all through the night in a silent storm, and they covered the roofs and blocked the doors and smothered the animals who dept outdoors. So many flowers fell from the sky that in the morning the streets were carpeted with a compact cushion and they had to clear them away with shovels and rakes so that the funeral procession could pass by."

The fifty buck joyless
cold lemonade and a battered
old textbook will do.
And I'll have a side serving of
life, with that, thank you.
Carry spare change, carry lots
of distractions that you can
reach into a sack and pull out of.
Building close ties with all the
people inside my head-
head on, bouncing, beautiful,
joyless.
Satiation, it seems
is too much effort.
Perpetual hunger will keep you on your feet
pushing, stretching, aspiring
to make it through, make it through.

I worship the clock.
But this class isn't over yet.
(can you whisper nicotine and crawl into my veins?)
I have the blueprints here, if you want to
make your machine and fly away.

My world twitches, manically,
As if electrocuted.
(Dragonflies skim the surface of the pond
but only long enough to outstrip their
reflections.)
I digress. The glass sweats.

Im going to smile for you, now, and i want
you to take a picture of me.

for you, and the childhood together that we never had, but remember anyway.

2 little whos
(he and she)
under are this
wonderful tree

smiling stand
(all realms of where
and when beyond)
now and here

(far from a grown
-up i &you-
ful world of known)
who and who

(2 little ams
and over them this
aflame with dreams
incredible is)

-e e cummings

large gaps in my heart are slowly filled with the
silent whooshing of a breath of warm air. dull aching fingers
rest heavily on your tired skin. we reach out between the lines and bars and sonnets of
human verse
smile through screens of blue white light.
and i pause, two inches from completely giving in to you.

Choose life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a fucking big television, choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players, and electrical tin openers. Choose good health, low cholesterol, and dental insurance. Choose fixed-interest mortgage repayments. Choose a starter home. Choose your friends. Choose leisurewear and matching luggage. Choose a three piece suit on hire purchase in a range of fucking fabrics. Choose DIY and wondering who the fuck you are on a Sunday morning. Choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing, spirit-crushing game shows, stuffing fucking junk food into your mouth. Choose rotting away at the end of it all, pishing your last in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarassment to the selfish, fucked-up brats you have spawned to replace yourself. Choose your future. Choose life.

But why would I want to do a thing like that?

-Trainspotting

its like watching a foreign film, or a silent movie. i can understand each word on its own, but strung together like... alleles, on a chromosome... they just seem to go on and on making no sense. im not really paying attention. something pulls me towards fear as if it were a dark, bottomless well and the minute im standing over it im sick with vertigo... suddenly weightless, suddenly... panicked. panic. panic. fear. fear.

so that they will recognize my eyes
in a crowd, so that
they dont run away, turn around
so that you remind me of who i am
two strangers in a strange land
and tounges stutter words unfamiliar
cities built stone by painful stone
and hearts beat stronger
standing still, moving closer to home
here, within the cusp of light between your hand and mine,
between the naked feet that run, laughing, side by side
under the melting heat of skin, in the sun dappled shadow of a grin
a thousand pinpoints of light dance on the water as
fluid fishnets of the sun swim...

you are

everything i love.
tied up, enshrined as gently as a
monarch's wing
this secret, faded old wooden box
of wishes,
and whipers,
and wonderings...

the water fountain
three stories up is
always exactly
the right temperature you need to cool
the burnt sores on the tip
of your tongue.

outside, again, twenty minutes later this time
in looser pants, in softer slippers
beyond the frosted door
i notice its not so cold,
so cold anymore.
past chokidaar drooping over glowing coals
never stopped to greet him before
and im suddenly
not thinking about anything in particular
anymore
alseep, in the chair,
bent over, sitting there thats not
its not fair, somehow..
past lovers linked in their silent
soft talk, statues of flesh and bone
and if the world had a lover she too would
live on love alone...
devdaas couldve have been so much better, suddenly
aesthetic erotica, romanticised
invaded by alienation-
we're all just stupid painted a shade of wise
we're all just colourblind idiots in disguise
walking out into the not-cold night air
in my chappals, past the people
swimming there
through the haunted stillness of silent rain
past the snores of tired sleepers
the lovers and the gatekeepers
glittering earth, glistening creepers
beneath my heavy step:
my ghost will lead my shadow
across the cobbled floor-
its not so cold,
(i notice)
now,
not so cold
anymore.

Beyond the door,
There's peace I'm sure,
And I know there'll be no more
Tears in heaven.

'Cause I know I don't belong... Here in heaven.

-Eric Clapton, Tears in Heaven

Sadomasochistic tendencies often drive people like me to read things like this... that and evil Communication Skills teachers who one veiws with a mixture of pity and disgust, because they chose to make livelihoods out of enforcing political correctness on the world.

"The popular MIT economist Paul Krugman tells the story of Smokey Mountain, a huge landfill outside of Manila and "a popular media symbol of Third World poverty." Hundreds of families chose to live on the dump, collecting scrap metal and other recyclables, subjecting themselves to the stench and unhealthy air in return for the higher wages they were offered.

This image is both upsetting and frightening. As Krugman points out, however, media stories like Smokey Mountain mask something even more unsettling - what must the less-documented rural poverty be like that families actually choose to escape by moving to a waste dump?

I'm sure Hausman would agree with me that almost all U.S. jobs are better than those offered by Smokey Mountain or by sneaker sweatshops. We are (rightly) appalled at these working conditions, but most of us do not get to see the alternatives these workers face. Sadly, it is usually unemployment and starvation. Trade may create unappealing jobs for developing countries, but the fact that these jobs are freely filled reveals that bad jobs are better than no jobs for these workers."

yeah, sure... we've made the world so that some people eat cake, and some people eat shit. if they didnt eat shit, they would starve and die. so, like... shits not that bad, i guess....

the stupid, stupid commercialisation of Karachi culture... its expos, franchises, chains, Zaibunissas and Zamzamas, designers, divas and demons. and now, the latest... The Jewel in the Crown. how incrediblely stupid are we in the clutches of the second Imperialism? have we no dignity? its bad enough that this land was exploited once, must we bend over and say "fuck me again, your royal highness!"?! besides, we were never the jewel. we were the fly in the royal ointment... with all the Hur rebellions and riots and refusals to be ruled. now thats something worth celebrating....
oh yes jolly good ol boy lets relive the days of the good ol Raj before those damned sepoys had that insolent mutiny of theirs, wot? a cup of tea on the good ol' Lady Lloyd pier would hit the spot, eh? do bring the memsahib, if shes done fucking the native boys. such a feather in our caps, this place... pity to let it all go, really. they do have the best tea. bloody barabarians... after all we've done for them, really! this is no place for gentlemen.
there are people in london who blanch- and rightfully so- at the mere mention of colonialism. there are British journalists who have apologised to the "Orient" that the west created and destroyed. and you... you stupid, senseless IDIOTS are celebrating the Raj?!?!

Somewhere within that one hour I must have started shivering, uncontrollably. And I knew I must have felt some semblance of tears rising in my throat. And I didn’t feel like living, I didn’t feel like going on in a world that allows these things to continue. I hate myself, my religion, the society I live in. verses in the Quran make me shudder, because I cant believe that anyone they’d call God would advocate something like that. Shudder to think of the lashes those protestors felt, shudder to think of the power the law of this godforsaken land wields. I am not afraid, I am sick. I am angry… and anger seems to have drained the energy from my hands and body. As if at every step, at every single turn I learn how cruel life is, how fundamentally wrong and unfair and unjust to just about anybody, and that nothing can be done to untangle this mad, horrible choking mess that this sadistic, totalitarian religion of ours has wreaked upon us… I have no faith. Not in mankind, not in man, not in any of his Gods. No God of man could ever assure him the right to burn and rape and victimize and torture and stone to death someone who has as much right to freedom, life, love, sexuality, infidelity, faith as he does. And if God does, if God does do all these things, if mankind itself was one masochistic act of divine chootiyapan, I want to quit. Now. I don’t want to belong to a religion that says all men are equal, but women… have special laws. I don’t want to belong to a society that deliberately misinterprets and advocates these laws, like a misshapen, deformed child whose idea of power is to cut of each of his imperfect limbs, one by one so that the right hand may have supreme dominance. I don’t want to live a life that lets me forget these things, slowly and gently easing my mind, soothing it, singing it its peaceful little lullabies like the tinkling of gold coins…. Everything I touch; the clothes I wear, the books from which I read, the places of learning and worship seem to have been made by millions of tiny hands, millions of starving little children screaming bug eyed, toothless, lice-bitten, bawling in their flea-ridden beds. It’s hard to believe in anything. I’m not asking for sympathy. If you think I couldn’t handle it, that I couldn’t really deal with the little trickles of truth as they hit me, you were right. I can’t. I cried when the first sword fell, I gave up the minute they killed the first innocent person. I felt, very honestly, that if someone who has done nothing wrong can be annihilated without anything moving except the dust that they fall in, then I definitely have no business to go on living.

if you could lend your ears to even the softest of voices around you.
if you could overcome your fear of the tiny winged insects that crash fitfully into your window at night
if you could learn to ignore the mad buzzing of voices judging what they dont understand
understanding what they cant judge
forgetting all that they cant be bothered to learn....
if you could learn
to respect things you cant relate to
to let go of the dreams that you hold on to with neurotic tenacity
to give up, back down, move on
stop thinking....

afternoon sky;
pink porcelain and
blue marble
held beneath a pale opal shimmer
this flushed strawberry sun
glowing, softly behind
this hazy veil of winter.

clear morning ice;
the air, sharp, like something metallic
glittering, beads of white fire on the grass
one distant, cold, rimless disc in the sky.
sharper, bluer, a world underwater;
like blue glass, like steel blades
another teethsucking dawn,
another
skinprickling day.

the story behind the "schwang".
because there is a schwang.
schwang-schwang, schwang-schwang.
its the feel of scruffy knees peeking out from a worn grey school skirt, ending in socks and tennis shoes, schwang- schwanging back and forth over the edge of a desk. side to side, aagey peechey. front kick back kick schwang schwang, schwang schwang.
its the feel of the same knees, now covered in pjs, perched on a kitchen counter, kicking against the wooden cabinets below. schwang-boom-schwang. schwang-schwang-boom-schwang.
its not just the knees, actually. the twiggy little lower calves joined at the knee enjoy it immensely, too. love the fall, the kick, the swing, the i-cant-feel-my-feet that comes with it. so they kick out. dhuzh!-schwang-boom-schawng-DHUZH!
the beatles even wrote a song about it.
yellow submarine...
"in the towwwnnn... (schwang schwang) where i was bornnnn (schwang schwang) lived a mannnnn... (schwang schwang) who sailed to seaaa..... (schwang schwang)"

yes. let profundity go to pot. sit back, chill, listen to some beatles... and schwang.