Plato

I.

This is a perfect image of me:
seated and quaking in the front seat of

my '99 Dodge Neon (with spoiler)
turbo, outside the resteraunt I love

is a waitress I love and will have so
many gorgeous babies with; the first goal

done when I left the house with a
grain of maybe in my pocket and from

out the driveway took my car.
She is smoking slowly a cigarette.

II.

This is a perfect image of car:
the wheels and frame, a chassis

as a slave to control, the summit
of physical and mechanical genius.

I want a whip with eight tails to slap
the car's vulgar engine into shit

and drive it ragged, before it only
goes so far, like a Vietnam grunt,

and kills me with its own force
which I forced it to hump and carry.

Chapter 1

Two bowls of store-brand Froot Loops are consumed. Not the actual trademarked Froot Loops, but those damn bagged cereals that grocery stores sell now. Except for the container, the packaging is obnoxiously ripped off from the traditional groups: the snazzy and hip (yet strangely outdated (a bear wearing roller blades as if the millenium never happened)) cartoon character and the ridiculous pun of “Froot Hoops” or “Lucky Treasures” or “Sugar-Coated Flakes”; with the exception of marshmallows (that dried sugar shit) the cereal is exactly the same. I wish everyone else would buy these knock-offs and relieve me of the inert feeling of poverty I get from eating the run-off from more successful brands. The taste, texture, everything is identical, so why aren't the major brands out of money? I know a shit poor family which still buys the box, as if cardboard was representative of a cerealocracy (impressive word, huh?) in which Jesus wouldn't come back to save the whole of us with his salvation; he would shun us fool-hardy religious folk as he sped his damn at-the-bottom-of-every-box-plastic-toy filled chariot back towards the pearly gates, laughing with Tony the Tiger and Toucan Sam and whatever that little leprechaun fucker's name is. Probably Lucky. Clever bastards, naming an Irish stereotype Lucky.

I have respect for the things in this world that don't remind you of the brand name first. Milk, for example, is the optimum drink for men and women shucking the responsibilities of label. Sure, you'll have vegetarians, vegans, and all sorts of animal activists bemoaning the treatment of the cows, but still, there is no more perfect beverage; served either hot or cold, nourishing, and is never brought to you by. Years ago, when the “Got Milk” ads began, they were queueing into that post-Generation X apathy, you know, the “we have no real things to stand behind” attitude which left us all vulnerable to any marketing vulture ready to swoop down and make a kosher party platter out of our displaced innards and passions. Thankfully, Coca Cola was out wooing the middle east, and MTV was too obssessed with music (at that point) to think of whoring youth. In came a coalition of dairy, flirting with danger and cradling us into lactation. The chant, “Got Milk” isn't advertising. It isn't advertising until Jennifer Aniston gets involved. The phrase itself is a fetus of greater conditioning, the will to power replaced by the will to possession. Before, everything was geared towards motivating the slacker, but once those down-trodden flannel wearing Seattleites finally got moving, they realized the deeper secrets of financial dominance: rich people don't make more rich people. And so, “Got Milk” was devised by new hierarchy to ensure that the scraggly generation following suit, was kept in the feudal position, namely, the serf. “Live off the land, Microsoft will provide” and “Don't worry, that mobile sidekick will save your life.” In a world where phone booths were barely noticed, cellular phones became necessity, not because of necessity, but because everyone agreed it was necessity. And those people at work, the ones who came in with the hands-free headset and the top-of-the-line blackberrys, the vegans and Atkins freaks, the proto skaters and the rap musicians, they are all just the next line of a finely tuned robot produced and manufactured by a breed of people the world wasn't supposed to suspect of accomplishing anything. I respect that cut throat covert practice. Nothing bugs me more than when these bastards are obvious. I've constantly argued for a secret government because to hear the scum say that they “know you” is slap in the face not unlike your favorite senator coming into your kitchen while you eat breakfast and shitting in your cereal. Literally.

I Know You're Shivering in Antici

pation.

I couldn't help it :p but onto the bright and shining lies of the world that all kinda come together in a quilt of reality I like to call that "Indian Blanket Thing". Newsflash horndogs, this here rustling blog tonight is brought you on the basis and concensus of an all out indiscretion in the name of free thought. It's hard to say free thought in free thought without it devolving into a discussion about the process of free thought so I promise and immediate digression for your reading enjoyment.

Solarity is the kin to all kinds of cosmic hereafters. Man loves poetry when it burns and hurts and scars and peels the flesh, but its the grotesque things that drive the fascination; however, that fascination leaves off at talent. To understand poetry, to understand it, you have to be in commune with the subject of verse: you need a pencil or pen or paper or an idea before you even set out the door. Often it helps to speak it. Avoid the esoteric and the obscure unless you're looking to impress those bourgeouis bastards and their stranglehold on the arts. Poetry was meant to be enjoyed in soliloquy and one should not have to consult an encyclopedia just to get the point and on should not have to mull over an image just because the poet links the two inoperable things together with the surgical twine of a syntax. Cummings was a fading star and he will never hold a candles to masters of form because CUmmings breaks the first rule that poetry exists in the mouth.

Dating is for the Birds...or how I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb

Entered a bill into www.wheresgeorge.com. My dollar bill was originally used as tender at Harper's Ferry. Wow. 56 miles in 4 days.

Finished work at Costco as a demoer.

It's good to be back amongst the familiar junk...went out to dinner with Brian tonight. We bitched about "Kindom of Heaven" as well as the nihilistic tendencies of David Hume and Libertarians. It seems slightly chauvinistic to pronounce other cultures as primitive, but if we don't have those measuring sticks for civilization and acivilization, then what are we but a conglomerate of egalitarians? People need rules, unfortunately. People have never proven themselves as effective and fair in the course of human histories.

Somedays I feel like I am too hard on humanity, because I expect such high standards.

Right now, I'm looking at my notebook, "Entelechy"-- the name means in Greek, "The reduced life". The meaning basically is that inside this little book, is a complete life derived from my own, it exists as a part, but it is also its self. Aristotle used the term to describe excellence. Someone else I know called it a commonplace book. The two terms are not that far apart. She's a smart one, I gotta say. Don't know where she went though. Just kinda evaporated away. I'm not unused to the treatment, too bad.

Sonnet 10?

The Night was Thick and Fallen

The night was thick and fallen
as I cracked the bedroom window

to let the summer air trip in
until there was nowhere to go

that I wouldn't feel I was
outside; the cloud of lazy dreams

runs only in a summer fuzz:
the buzz of burning May it seems

to follow me wherever. Today,
was another day without yet her,

as yesterday, in its callow way,
called to me; that there never were

suns or sly moons, together, to count
the slumbering summer nights run out.

Tomorrow I will be going to the beach. Hooray for me.

Room has been rearranged to accentuate the books. I had no idea I needed two NEW bookcases, let alone one. Upon the shelves are various nick-nacks I've collected, among them: a melted candle solid in form, a disturbed form; an old watch box full of dry and used flower petals, the lid is shut capturing a scent I like to call, "the essence of winter sleep" (Frost) i.e. decay; more than a few pieces of origami assembled so long ago that their appearance is a mystery; various trophys for Karate, soccer, baseball, however, my favorite has to be the "I Hate Your Favorite Wrestler" coffee mug from the short-lived "Superplex Radio" (I did my friend a favor and shot off a few columns for his website); finally, I have the commencement flower from my high school graduation, it stilly sits in its vase long-dead, a rememberance of what education is.

The things we know and what we learn do decay over time, but there is the unquestionable presence of what it was. Life endures, changes, it's law; however, the reality of things is constant. The things I know, ultimately drain the pool of ambition, lucky is the man who finds a fountain. I'm still searching for my fountain, that person or place or thing which will make my education endure despite its degression-- what is a love of life without a life of love? it cannot be teased from nothing. This schlock is going to annoy me in a second, but just for a second, it stands as sweet honesty...I'll savor it.

Velocity

And she says, we're all like bullets,
to which I reply, no. The trajectory
of a bullet is something we all admire
but can never attain. You need
silence in your life because silence
means the air is still.

When nothing moves, then maybe you
have velocity. In other times
and different air pressures, pressing
the nozzle and kissing its iron schnoz
makes the time pass quicker...
but only if you didn't know what time it was to start.

She says time is too long. But of
course it is, you would expect such
a thing like time to press on like
a bullet. Man does not have that
velocity and time does not have that velocity.
You and me and the gun and the bullet
endure in space, so I guess we're all like bullets.
Like you said. Like she said, the expert
placement of a gun suddenly becomes
symbolic of suicide as if there was
never a man who cured himself the
way ham is cured. I will have to admit

theft on that last sentence from some
chap named Knobshill or Cobbshil or Numskill.
So sue me for plagiarism, a lawsuit
has its own velocity. It operates
out of air because law counts
on strangling its victims. Choke
on your free speech, to quote Falstaff,
"What is honor? Air."
A fat man was never so true.

Bertrand Russel Can Kiss My Ass

A- in Shakespeare
B+ in 1970s

What's the difference? .10. That's all it would've taken to be able to say all A's so far.

In terms of other things taking so little to succeed... I'm not a needy guy romantically speaking. But the one thing that consistently happens to me that I am not happy about is being left in the dark. I try. God knows that I try, yet somehow the result always ends up being me having to assume rejection. No one has the courage to just say, "hey, Sean, you're great, but I don't think this will work." Instead I get to run around for days thinking I have SOMETHING, when in reality, I have NOTHING. I'm not at all fit, and sometimes I lack intelligence, so I can see why I might be turned down, but damn it all if it isn't the most frustrating thing in the world to convince yourself back and forth for an entire week just because someone doesn't grant you the priority to let you know where the hell you stand?! She was a 10. I never before had a chance with a 10, and now I know that I never did. Depressing. I don't want to end up like one of those guys who aims low because he cannot get what he really wants, but I'm afraid life is chock full of compromises like that.

And people wonder why sometimes I am skeptical of women in general. Maybe if I was some Adonis, then I wouldn't have this problem. But, of course, if I was like that, what worries would I have over one female? Virtue inhabits a type of beauty, but I doubt that physical appearance ever indicates deeper truths. Like produces Like, at least that's my attitude towards the world. And so, lonliness only brings on more solitude, shallowness doesn't dig, it spreads, and being a difficult person will only net you the unfair loves.

That is why I am a Catholic. I am because I chose. It's simple as you want it to be. Divisions in religion lead to complexity and shatters faith. You cannot go through life dedicated to the idea of everything because then you're just pushing the role of the organism onto a single cell; life is too subjective to try to ignore choice.

Signing off,
Sean.

Skin

They never say, oh what a fine
actor I am, and mean it. Not
everyone, but someone, only loves
in the sense a politician loves

his country-- for profit. Whether I stretch

out my lines
or cut them
short,

I am more than brave to be there.

Confusio

First off, the idea of I and of you
is a rough philosophy, rougher than
dry limestone; it scrapes my palm too
much to handle in one sitting-- as

I was brought up to understand,
you need to work her over to pass
her. Now there is no better hand
to caress than mine and its prone

scratches like the greater thinkers'
hands which move backward from bone
to knuckle, under skin, over skin, hers.
I am logic's bastard dialectical born

from beauty and reason, become man,
like limestone-- nothing can be rougher than.

Only Young

I sat as I was once young;
collecting trinkets, wasting
time, and watching the sun
in a languid arc, passing
its sultry shadow over me.

A collection of rocks. More
specifically, gravel, the fine
stones, chalky and dryly torn
from taste. Rocks from some mine
too far away to know its name.

They were jewels, worn
in some previous life-
style where jades adorn
the common things, a king's knife
smattered with coal

Mined by black men in hills--
their grubby nails dig
into slobbering dark and dust
for handfuls snugly big
that I will call trinkets
as I was young, only.

Cynical

I cannot abide the cynical readers,
the coffeshop types stopped up
with critique. Pouring forth
all the proper examinations of
life's shoulds and folly love.

Believe Hal, believe, Hal-believers,
that you're honest and a cut above.
When lovers leave for the fourth
or fifth time, then I'll sweat
my watch a sea of time per sigh,

But until that time waves me down,
drowns me, stops me, soaks me full,
I can read honesty into everything.
Honestly. I swear it. On that rood
of the rose will I swear my mood.

Words are always enough. Honeysuckle,
buttercup, lilacs both white and purple,
are rhymers and mariners of the night above,
out of taste of the sour writers low.
May I never be too bitter for short-lived love.